Establishing Goals and Expectations

This article outlines how far the community schools movement has come since the AFT made community schools a priority in 2008. It explains why the movement has grown, clarifies what exactly makes a community school different from other schools, lays out how community schools work, and shows the positive results that community schools are attaining.

The updated and expanded second edition of this classic text provides new research and insights into how principals can encourage the teacher development that enhances student learning.

This was a historic meeting among developers of evidence-based programs, leaders of various cultural, racial, and ethnic professional associations, and representatives of family associations. Evidence-based program implementation and cultural competence in human services have had parallel paths with limited intersection and dialogue.

The summary can be found on the "Resources" tab of the Active Implementation website.  

Using 4 years of panel data constructed from the North Carolina Teacher Working Condition Survey, this study uses value-added modeling approaches to explore the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of four measures of their working conditions and their principal.

Handbook of Response to Intervention in Early Childhood represents an ambitious undertaking: namely, to gather within a single volume all of the knowledge that exists on a topic that has attracted much attention in recent years.

This paper examines how the hiring process is changing as a result of teacher evaluation reforms.

This report provides a practical “management guide,” for an evidence-based key indicator data decision system for school districts and schools.

Over many decades, educators have developed countless interventions and theories about how to create lasting change. In other words, implementation research is an endeavor to understand if and how educational efforts are accomplishing their goals. 

The goal of this article is to illustrate various strategies that the Hawaii Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division adopted to increase the use of empirical evidence to improve the quality services and outcomes for youth.

This study hypothesizes the following: Trust and leadership dimensions that support empowerment and involvement will predict an educational organization’s ability to minimize a threat–rigid response and flexibly negotiate new demands.

This book by organizational psychologist Aubrey C. Daniels is a guide for anyone who is required to supervise people and is particularly relevant to school principals. It is based on applying positive consequences to improve performance and offers strategies to reduce undesirable behavior so your school and employees can be successful.

This article illustrates how successful leaders combine the too often dichotomized practices of transformational and instructional leadership in different ways across different phases of their schools' development in order to progressively shape and “layer” the improvement culture in improving students' outcomes.

This book examines the nature of successful school leadership: what it is, what it looks like in practice & what are the consequences for schools & pupils.

This report highlights the key research literature that addresses the principal competencies important for positive student and school outcomes.

A meta-analysis of after-school programs that seek to enhance the personal and social skills of children and adolescents indicated that, compared to controls, participants demonstrated significant increases in their self-perceptions and bonding to school, positive social behaviors, school grades and levels of academic achievement, and significant reductions in problem behaviors.

When schools form partnerships with families and the community, the children benefit. These guidelines for building partnerships can make it happen.

This article describes an innovative approach, developed by North Carolina State University,
to prepare leaders specifically for work in rural schools in high poverty districts. 

This book is written by Tom Gilbert who is one of the most influential theorists in building a science of performance management. Although not explicitly written for educators, it offers concrete examples principals can apply to improve the performance of teachers and other school personnel so student’s can ultimately be successful.

Examines trends in the evolution of the principalship in the United States from the 1960s to the present.

This paper explores several types of school contexts (institutional, community, socio-cultural, political, economic, school improvement) and what we have learned about how they shape school leadership practice.

This longitudinal study examines the effects of collaborative leadership on school improvement and student reading achievement in 192 elementary schools in one state in the USA over a 4-year period

This article reviews the evolution of instructional leadership as a model for principal practice, examines barriers to its successful enactment, and proposes strategies

This chapter of Handbook of The Economics of Education reviews research on teacher labor markets, the importance of teacher quality in the determination of student achievement, and the extent to which specific observable characteristics often related to hiring decisions and salary explain the variation in the quality of instruction.

This Wallace paper summarizes a decade of the foundation’s research in school leadership to identify five critical roles for school principals to be effective.

Using findings generated from a large-scale survey of 1,400 Ontario principals, this paper reports on the influence of opportunities for school–community involvement on the work principals do on a daily basis and details how involvement in such activities influences and impacts their workloads.

This longitudinal study examines the effects of distributed leadership on school improvement and growth in student math achievement in 195 elementary schools in one state over a 4-year period.

Noting that the evidence of families' influence on their children's school achievement is consistent, positive, and convincing, this report examines research on parent and community involvement and its impact on student achievement.

This updated and substantially expanded edition reveals how to build strong collaborative relationships and offers practical advice for improving interactions between parents and teachers, from insuring that PTA groups are constructive and inclusive to navigating the complex issues surrounding diversity in the classroom.

The authors outline some of the mechanisms through which parental school involvement affects achievement and identify how patterns and amounts of involvement vary across cultural, economic, and community contexts and across developmental levels. Then propose the next steps for research. 

The specific purposes of this article are to identify and synthesize the empirical research on how leadership influences student achievement and to provide evidence on how school leaders should direct their efforts.

The authors conducted correlational analyses to examine the strength of the relationship between each of the seven competencies and found that the model appears to reflect the internal states of principals who orchestrate school turnaround. 

This review critically examines 15 empirical studies, conducted since the mid1980s, on the effects of support, guidance, and orientation programs—collectively known as induction—for beginning teachers.

the authors build on this body of work by further examining how working conditions predict both teachers‘ job satisfaction and their career plans.

This comprehensive review provides a framework for the expanding body of literature that seeks to make not only teaching, but rather the entire school environment, responsive to the schooling needs of minoritized students

The study explored the following overarching question: What does it take for leaders to promote and support powerful, equitable learning in a school and in the district and state system that serves the school? The study pursued this question through a set of coordinated investigations,

This study is among the first to address the empirical limitations of prior studies on organizational contexts by leveraging one of the largest survey administration efforts ever conducted in the United States outside of the decennial population census.

This quantitative study examines the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions and their intended and actual departures from schools.

Instead of looking at the principal alone for instructional leadership, we need to develop leadership capacity among all members of the school communities.

This study addressed teachers' and parents' perceptions of the meanings and functions of parent involvement. 

Effective school districts maintain superintendent and school board collegiality which can foster success and connectedness among members. Delagardelle and Alsbury (2008) found that superintendents and board members are not consistent in their perceptions about the work the board does, and Glass (2007) found that states do not require boards to undergo evaluation for effectiveness.

This study examines the relationship between two dominant measures of teacher quality, teacher qualification and teacher effectiveness (measured by value-added modeling), in terms of their influence on students’ short-term academic growth and long-term educational success (measured by bachelor’s degree attainment).

This article describes a 4-year program of research about transformational forms of leadership in schools
responding to a variety of restructuring initiatives.

For aspiring leaders, this framework provides important insights about what they will need to learn to be successful.

The purpose of this paper is to provide one perspective on this question, focusing in particular on findings that may be applicable in the Nordic context.

This study aimed to estimate the impact of collective, or shared, leadership on key teacher variables and on student achievement. 

Using meta-analytic review techniques, this study synthesized the results of 79
unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its
impact on the school organization, teachers, and students.

In 2008 the authors published an article in this journal entitled Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership (Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008). This article revisits each of the seven claims, summarising what was said about each in the original publications, weighing each of the claims considering recent empirical evidence, and proposing revisions or refinements as warranted.

The authors begin with eight basic understandings, assumptions, or starting points for our subsequent account of how to lead the successful turnaround of underperforming school. 

This report by researchers from the Universities of Minnesota and Toronto examines the available evidence and offers educators, policymakers and all citizens interested in promoting successfulschools, some answers to these vitally important questions

Guided by a synthesis of theory on human motivation and evidence about teachers’motivation to implement school reform, this study aimed to better understand the responses of teachers and school administrators to government accountability initiatives and to assess the extent to which leadership practices had a bearing on those responses

This meta-analysis finds a positive relationship between school principals spending time on five commonly assigned roles and student achievement. 

The authors summarize 35 years of empirical research on goal-setting theory. They describe the core findings of the theory, the mechanisms by which goals operate, moderators of goal effects, the relation of goals and satisfaction, and the role of goals as mediators of incentives. The external validity and practical significance of goal-setting theory are explained, and new directions in goal-setting research are discussed.

Recent studies concerned with goal choice and the factors that influence it, the function of learning goals, the effect of goal framing, goals and affect (well-being), group goal setting, goals and traits, macrolevel goal setting, and conscious versus subconscious goals are described.

The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of the relationships among principal transformational leadership, school leadership-team transformational leadership, and school culture.

This study investigates teacher empowerment in schools that have at least four years of experience with some form of decentralized or school-based management. 

Focusing on school leadership relations between principals and teachers, this study examines the potential of their active collaboration around instructional matters to enhance the quality of teaching and student performance

The present paper is an attempt to formulate a positive theory of motivation which will satisfy these theoretical demands and at the same time conform to the known facts, clinical and observational as well as experimental. It derives most directly, however, from clinical experience. 

A within-subjects multiple baseline across subjects design was employed to assess the effects of a self-management intervention involving self-recording and goal setting on the academic behaviour of three Year 4 (8-year-old) boys during language (poetry and story writing) lessons

This report examines the evidence about the emerging approach, Integrated student supports (ISS), from multiple perspectives. 

This book introduces the foundations of the recently revised professional educational leadership standards and provides an in-depth explanation and application of each one.

This paper presents the research base and conceptual framework for a new principal leadership assessment tool: the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED™).

This article presents findings from the authors' exploratory study of 12 instructionally effective
school districts (IESD) in California. 

The purpose of this analysis is to describe the research base that undergirds the emerging concept of learning-centered leadership.

This book offers a comprehensive and strategic approach to address what has become labeled as "talent and human capital."

This report reviews studies that have investigated the relationships between principal characteristics (including precursors, behaviors, and leadership styles) and student achievement.

This book provides essential information to better understand and improve the nature and quality of school and family partnerships for the benefit of all children

This articles suggest policymakers to focus less on the international test and more on how states compare to each other when trying to improve schools. This article also shows how it's not worthwhile to compare school in countries where the conditions are different. 

Administrator support has been identified as a key factor in deterring teacher turnover. Yet, the specific ways school principals directly or indirectly influence teacher retention remain underexamined. The paper aims to discuss this issue. 

This booklet focuses on parents—the child’s first and most powerful teachers.

This study examined the school-level effects on tested student achievement in 129 high poverty elementary schools that implemented a common set of comprehensive parent engagement strategies over a 2-year period. 

This paper is a synthesis of the evidence-base on school leadership and its impact on student performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative impact of different types of leadership on students' academic and nonacademic outcomes.

This paper provides an overview of previous research results pertaining to the relation between interest and academic achievement. focus on the conceptualization and operationalization of interest.

This study examines the influence of principal leadership in high schools on classroom instruction and student achievement through key organizational factors, including professional capacity, parent–community ties, and the school’s learning climate.

This report sets forth a framework of essential supports and contextual resources for school improvement, examines empirical evidence on its key elements and how they link to improvements in student learning, and investigates how a school's essential supports interact with community context to affect student learning.

This paper reviews evidence from six recent studies, which collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not fleeing their students, but rather the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and their students to learn. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture.

The report examines the internal and external conditions that matter for students’ and teachers’ feelings of safety.

This paper examines the critical issues that need to be addressed if value-added modeling is to be effectively used in education.

Based on a synthesis of unpublished transformational school leadership (TSL) research completed during the last 14 years, this study inquired into the nature of TSL and its effects on student achievement using review methods including standard meta-analysis and vote-counting techniques. 

This study reviews evidence about the overall influence of direction-setting leadership practices (DSLPs), 1 of 4 major categories of practices included in a widely known conception of effective leadership (e.g., Leithwood & Louis, 2011) and a focus of many other such conceptions, as well.

This paper examines the effects of principal leadership and peer teacher influence on teachers' instructional practice and student learning.

This empirical study of the practice of five elementary school principals whose student achievement gains were three times the expected rate of progress redefines some capabilities identified in the literature as central to leadership for learning.

The hypothesis that guided this study was that the degree of teacher professionalism in a school would be related to (a) the professional orientation of principals in their exercise of administrative authority—especially, the extending of adaptive discretion to teachers in the conduct of their work—and (b) the trust evident among various actors in the school community.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement.

This report looks at New York City's efforts to create an evidence-based and collaborative teaching culture.

The purpose of this study was to examine various factors that are often present in principal–teacher interactions and teacher–teacher relationships to see how those may have an impact on teachers’ classroom instructional practices.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss findings from Learning from Leadership. This study was designed to identify and describe successful educational leadership and to explain how such leadership can yield improvements in student learning.

The purpose of this Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement is to provide principles for restructuring and substantially improving schools.

This article offers practical suggestions on how to build a data-based culture in schools.

This paper considers issues surrounding the use data and data based decision-making in schools. It describes the state of the field and possible future directions in school based technology.

This is an analysis of a district-wide evaluation of data uses and procedures for data-based decision-making.