Background: School improvement planning is a common school leadership practice built on assumptions that schools increase organizational performance if rational yearly plans are developed and then enacted with fidelity. A quality school improvement plan (SIP) should position subsequent critical leadership and instructional moves in a more holistic…

Background: Literature in the field of school leadership substantiates principals' influence on student achievement. There is less clarity about principals' influence on school turnaround or the competencies needed for principals to effectively turn around schools. Research Design: A two-phase, mixed-methods study design analyzed 41 behavioral…

In this study of high-poverty schools in Trinidad and Tobago, we (1) identified recurring patterns and generative mechanisms for successful principal leadership and (2) explored the utility of transformational, shared, and instructional leadership models. We argued that situational and country context are central to understanding school leadership…

The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) set forth the Renewal School initiative as a method of school turnaround that preserves the existing school community; with necessary leadership changes when applicable, and supplied human and operational resources. Educational research has cited that school leadership is the second leading…

School leadership is a key factor in school turnarounds. The general prescription for what school leaders should do tends to be this: Set high expectations for staff and students and give strong instructional supports. Most school systems recognize how tall an order this is, given everything else the principal job entails. Even principals who are…

Improving student performance in America's chronically underperforming schools has been a challenge for many decades. Despite various school reforms, little to no progress has been shown. Schools have continued to fail, and achievement gaps have widened. The current state of schools has called for a drastic intervention. School turnaround has…

Literature in the field of school leadership substantiates principals' influence on student achievement. Less clarity is available concerning principals' influence on school turnaround or the competencies needed for principals to effectively engage in and sustain the turnaround of low-performing schools. This study seeks to illuminate principal…

This brief summarizes the January and February 2018 Thought Leadership Forum presentations. January featured a content-based presentation by William Robinson from the University of Virginia on turnaround leadership competencies and February featured Hannah Peria and Elisabeth Peterson from the New Mexico Public Education Department profiling New…

This study investigated the impact of the transformation and turnaround intervention models and leadership perception on the achievement of students attending Kentucky's priority high schools. Repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted to show the effect of the chosen model on academic achievement of students with test scores obtained…

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of two educational leadership university programmes to improve the cognitive agility of their graduates. The research looked to discover whether the aspiring principals exited the programmes with an increased ability to employ cognitive agility--the ability to use the multiple thinking skills of…

As researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners focus on continuous improvement in education, local-level change is gaining importance. Yet, many local school improvement efforts fail to be fully implemented. Even those that are fully implemented often fail to sustain improvements because the schools are embedded in systems that face multiple…

North Carolina's Race to the Top (RttT) grant earmarked approximately $17.5 million to "increase the number of principals qualified to lead transformational change in low-performing schools in both rural and urban areas" (NCDPI, 2010, p.10). To accomplish this, the state established three Regional Leadership Academies (RLAs)…

A grant from the School Leadership Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education during 2008-14 provided the opportunities and resources for SREB to bring together its cutting-edge knowledge base, field experience, and substantial bank of publications and training materials in the closely related fields of school improvement and school…

This paper aims first to shed light on one element of leadership: the characteristics--or "competencies"--of turnaround leaders who succeed in driving rapid, dramatic change. Second, it recounts the elements of support that districts must provide these leaders to enable and sustain a portfolio of successful school turnarounds.…

The position of an urban high school principal, now takes on greater personal, emotional, and professional commitment beyond the traditional faculty management role. This research provided depicts detailed analysis of the independent and dependent variables associated with this newfound commitment urban principal's now embody. [The dissertation…