William A. Owings was Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Owings had worked as a public school teacher, an elementary school and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. His scholarly publications, co-authored with Leslie S. Kaplan, included books on educational leadership and school finance as well as articles in National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Teachers College Record, the Journal of Education Finance, and the Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics. Owings had served on the state and international boards of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and was a member of the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. He also reviewed articles for the NASSP Bulletin Educational Administration Quarterly, Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, and International Journal of Education Research. He was a frequent presenter at state and national conferences and a consultant on educational leadership, school finance, and instructional improvement. The National Education Finance Association honored Owings with its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2014, recognized him as a “Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice.” Owings and Kaplan share the 2008 Virginia Educational Research Association Charles Edgar Clear Research Award for Consistent and Substantial Contributions to Educational Research and Scholarship.Leslie S. Kaplan, a retired school administrator in Newport News, Virginia, is a full-time education writer, a former researcher with the Old Dominion University (ODU) Research Foundation, and adjunct professor of educational leadership at ODU in Norfolk, VA. She has provided middle school and high school instructional leadership as well as central office leadership as a director of program development. Before becoming a school administrator, she worked as a middle school and high school English teacher and school counselor with articles frequently published in The School Counselor. Kaplan’s scholarly publications, co-authored with William A. Owings, appear in numerous professional journals. In addition to this fourth edition of Foundations of Education, she has co-authored several books and monographs with Owings, including American Public School Finance (4th ed.); Introduction to the Principalship (2nd ed.); Equity Audits and School Resource Allocation: Applying Critical Resource Theory to Increase Equal Opportunity in Schools; Critical Resource Theory: A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding; Organizational Behavior for School Leadership: Leveraging Your School for Success; Culture Re-Boot: Reinvigorating School Culture to Improve Student Outcomes; Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Education; Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement; Best Practices, Best Thinking, and Emerging Issues in School Leadership; and Enhancing Teacher and Teaching Quality. Kaplan served for 20 years on the NASSP Bulletin Editorial Board. With experiences in a variety of education roles, she has the unique distinction of being honored as both Virginia’s Counselor of the Year and Assistant Principal of the Year. She is a past president of the Virginia Counselors’ Association and the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and she served as Board Member and Secretary for Voices for Virginia’s Children. She is a 2014 National Education Finance Academy “Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice.
