Purpose: Despite increased focus on the importance of the time principals spend on instructional leadership, there is little research on practical ways to help principals manage their time to achieve this goal. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of the school administration manager (SAM) process: a unique program designed…

The Performance Assessment for Leaders (PAL) was developed by a team of nationally recognized experts in response to a Massachusetts requirement to determine and evaluate the leadership abilities of candidates seeking initial school principal licensure. This article describes and evaluates research conducted on all aspects of a 2014-2015 statewide…

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less…

This article examines the evolution of education which informs school leadership. Using the punctuated equilibrium model of organizational change, we describe how education has evolved under the weight of shifting understandings in the economic and sociopolitical foundations of society. We track the corresponding cardinal shifts in schooling that…

Purpose: Performance evaluation informs professional development and helps school personnel improve student learning. Although psychometric literature indicates that a rational, sound, and coherent standard-setting process adds to the credibility of an assessment, few studies have empirically examined the decision-making process. This article…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing dialog of whether and how instructional leadership is distinguished conceptually from general leadership notions, such as charisma, and to continue the ongoing psychometric research on the The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) by examining its convergent and…

This three-volume report describes the "SAM (School Administration Manager) process," an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among…

This three-volume report describes the "SAM (School Administration Manager) process," an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among…

The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) is a multirater assessment of principals' learning-centered leadership. The instrument was developed based on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. In this article, we report on the validity and reliability evidence for the VAL-ED accumulated in a national field…

This three-volume report describes the "SAM (School Administration Manager) process," an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among…

This three-volume report describes the "SAM (School Administration Manager) process," an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among…

Research has consistently shown that principal leadership matters for successful schools. Evaluating principals on the behaviors shown to improve student learning should be an important leverage point for raising leadership quality. Yet principals are often evaluated with the use of instruments with no theoretical background and little, if any,…

In this article we present results of a comprehensive review of principal leadership assessment practices in the United States. Our analyses of both the general content and the usage of 65 instruments, 56 at the district level and 9 at the state level, provided an in-depth look at what and how districts and states evaluate principals. Using the…

In this article, we provide a grounded narrative of capacity building in the turnaround equation by exploring the turnaround literature outside of education and applying it to troubled schools. Our analysis is based upon reviews of: (1) 14 comprehensive, historical volumes that examine the turnaround phenomenon; (2) 16 book-length analyses of…

Effective school leadership is key to students' academic success. But the development of effective school leadership has been seriously hampered by the lack of technically sound tools to assess and monitor leaders' performance. This article presents the research base and conceptual framework for a leadership assessment instrument under…