Purpose: This study examines the sources and intensity of moral distress among school district leaders during the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigates their coping mechanisms for addressing issues that create moral dilemmas for them. Design and Evidence: We draw on semi-structured interviews with 26 school district…

Background and Purpose: District school improvement efforts have increasingly focused on improving the quality of support principals receive from the central office. This study uses the theoretical lens of recoupling to examines efforts by one urban district in the midst of change to revise the role of principal supervisors. Analysis focuses on…

Purpose: Existing research on loosely coupled educational systems has largely ignored the social and affective dimensions of such systems. Drawing on literature from organizational behavior, this study examines how "human" factors, including role identity dynamics, power dynamics, and stereotyping, shape the implementation of state-led…

Purpose: In this study, we trace the work of refugee student-family mentors (mentors) in an Arizona school district who work across school-family boundaries. Utilizing boundary spanning theory, we examine how education leaders--teachers, school principals, assistant principals, and district administrators--work with the mentors. We document the…

Purpose: We apply diffusion of innovations theory to examine two key research questions designed to inform efforts to improve the research--practice gap in education: (1) Are there distinct types of educators that differ in their prioritization of the compatibility, observability, complexity, relative advantage, and trialability of research? and…

Do school district central offices and school principals have the same level of influence on school decisions? What does the district-principal power relationship look like? These two questions are discussed but are rarely examined in the literature. Based on a nationally representative sample from the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey data,…

Purpose: The social aspect of leadership is often overlooked in the educational reform. This study aims to address the dearth of work in the social space around leadership and examines two different types of relational ties between leaders that capture the affective and work-related aspects of interpersonal relationships. Research Method: This…

Purpose: New teacher effectiveness measures have the potential to influence how principals hire teachers as they provide new and richer information about candidates to a traditionally information-poor process. This article examines how the hiring process is changing as a result of teacher evaluation reforms. Research Methods: Data come from…

Purpose: Research on educational leadership underscores the importance of principals operating as instructional leaders and intensive job-embedded supports for such work; this research also identifies central office staff as key support providers. However, it teaches little about what central office staff do when they provide such support and how…

Purpose: This study investigates how linkages between a central office and its schools served as administrative controls while fostering professional accountability and organizational learning. Method: Using qualitative data sources (interviews, focus groups, observations, field notes, and document reviews), the study examines how resource,…

Purpose: This article describes how trust emerged as an issue in one school district and the processes by which central office administrators enhanced trust with its school site leaders. Method: This exploratory participant observer case study uses multiple sources of data including surveys, interviews, observations, and documents collected during…

Uses concepts from organizational learning theory to provide theoretical framework for case study of Oakland, California, central-office administrators' roles and capacity to support the implementation of school-community partnerships. Draws implications for research and practice. (Contains 111 references, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)(PKP)

Explores the impact of the Central Office Staff (COS) on educational decisionmaking in a medium-sized city from an insider's'' perspective and sets forth several testable hypotheses. (Author)