ADVERSE EMPLOYMENT ACTIONS AND PUBLIC SCHOOL ...

acknowledge those meetings as notice of warning for performance issues. Those are not one in
the same.
DeLuca et al. (1997) explained that their study into the at-risk behaviors by school
administrators revealed that success was not guaranteed when administrators received support
via mentoring, but it was definitely more likely. “Only 21.6% of the respondents noted that
principals who were designated as being at risk maintained their positions after intervention
efforts had been applied” (DeLuca et al., 1997, p. 108). The message to DeLuca et al. (1997) was
quite clear: An isolated meeting with struggling school administrators was not a valid method to
improving performance. It is important that a specified path has been set forth for the mentor to
follow in his/her efforts to aid the floundering administrator. That path, according to Raisch and
Rogus (1995), includes the following steps: (1) frequent contact with the administrator,( 2)
provide various types of assistance possibly involving outside consultants if needed, (3) identify
problems early and collaborate to develop an improvement plan, (4)establish time parameters for
each phase of the mentoring cycle. The importance of mentoring to novice school administrators
was made clear by Daresh (2004), but the import to struggling administrators has been shown
and expounded upon by DeLuca et al. (1997).
In the world of sales, it is widely understood that it is far more expensive to gain a new
customer than it is to keep an existing one. Such logic does not carry over to the field of
education. Professional development measures to aid struggling school administrators are not
widely conducted or written about. However, through the work of various scholars, the necessity
for a mentoring program to aid in the development and improvement of school administrators is
vital to the school administrator avoiding adverse employment actions (Daresh, 2004; Deluca et
al., 1997; Lemley, 1997; Raisch & Rogus, 1995). The amount of responsibilities that beset a
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