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Challenging the field of educational administration to take an activist and prosocial justice stance, this article introduces the special issue. Some professors and preparation programs are inadequately attuned to equity concerns. Standards and testing for administrator licensure touch only the surface of cultural diversity, equity, and democracy. Disproportionally small percentages of administrators are women and minorities. Still, with the high turnover of administrators and with the work of scholars in Leadership for Social Justice, the time for transforming the field is now.

This experiment investigated the picture naming skills of dyslexic children, poor comprehenders and children with normally developing reading skills, using pictures whose names varied in word length and word frequency. Relative to young children reading at the same level, dyslexic children were less accurate at naming pictures that have long names, and they made a disproportionate number of phonological errors. In contrast, poor comprehenders showed normal effects of length but were slower and less accurate at naming pictures than control children, and in particular, they were poor at naming pictures that have low frequency names. These ndings are discussed within a framework in which picture naming ef ciency is related to underlying language skills in both the phonological and semantic domains.A substantial body of research documents the picture naming dif culties that many language or reading-impaired children experience (for example,

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According to a prominent theory, the phonological difficulties in dyslexia are caused by an underlying general impairment in the ability to process sequences of rapidly presented, brief sounds. Two studies examined this theory by exploring the relationships between rapid auditory processing and phonological processing in a sample of 82 normally reading children (Study 1) and by comparing 17 children with dyslexia to chronological-age and reading-age control participants on these tasks (Study 2). In the normal readers, moderate correlations were found between the measure of rapid auditory processing (Auditory Repetition Task, or ART) and phonological ability. On the ART, the dyslexia group performed at a level similar to that of the reading-age control group but obtained scores that were significantly below those of the chronological-age control group. This difference was due to a subgroup of 4 children in the dyslexia group who had particular difficulty with the ART. The phonological skills of these individuals were not worse than those of the children in the dyslexia group who were unimpaired on the ART. The discussion argues that there is no evidence that phonoogical difficulties are secondary to impairments of rapid auditory processing, as measured by the ART, and highlights the need to examine the strategic and cognitive demands involved in tasks of rapid auditory processing.

and others. Respondents noted that social justice issues must be addressed but barriers exist, including that administrators are stressed; the topic is considered too controversial by many; and dominant societal values are barriers. Respondents provided specific advice about training, such as: using policy levers like No Child Left Behind as motivators; start with "the higher calling"; be ethically appealing; put social justice requirements in licensure policy; use coalitions; and write articles in plain language for practitioners. Respondents' advice can be used to construct good leadership preparation and, ultimately, can lead to a reconstruction of leadership. Where do practicing administrators get support, advice, knowledge, and skills to remedy societal and school-based inequities? What interventions could transform the preparation of school leaders so they are willing and able to take an activist stand to eliminate the patterns that perpetuate inequity and exclusion? This article, a collaboration between an education scholar and an education policymaker, identifies policymakers' perceptions of social justice needs and their political, organizational, and strategic recommendations for creating institutes for social justice.

This study investigates the oral language skills of 8-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading and normal nonverbal ability, these children are poor at understanding what they have read. Tasks tapping 3 domains of oral language, namely phonology, semantics, and morphosyntax, were administered, along with measures that reflect an interaction of language domains that we refer to as broader language skills. Relative to control children matched for age and decoding ability, poor comprehenders were impaired across all measures except those tapping phonological skills. In addition to low oral language ability characterizing the group as a whole, some individuals had marked language impairments; it is argued that a substantial minority can be classified as having specific language impairment. However, none of the children had been previously recognized as having a language or reading impairment. These findings demonstrate that serious reading and language impairments are not always obvious in children who have good phonological ability and appear, superficially at least, to read well.

The powerful define the mainstream policy problems and determine the appropriate concerns for research in education. Those in power have operated for years from a male-normed paradigm. As a result, the needs and contributions of women have been marginalized. This article uses frameworks from the politics of knowledge and discourse to analyze ways in which gender research has been controlled and depoliticized. It identifies ignored feminist research and then poses challenges to researchers.