Ohio's Columbus City Schools developed a new urban grow-your-own principal pipeline. This pipeline emphasizes the cultivation of equity-centered principals who can address educational and social disparities in transformative and sustainable ways. Drawing from research and professional literature and from district and stakeholder engagements,…

This dissertation sought to answer questions about the sensemaking processes of teacher leaders in a middle school that was part of a state-wide improvement process called the "Ohio Improvement Process (OIP)." The context of the research was a historically under-performing school that had been part of the OIP for 6 years at the time the…

An estimated 17% to 30% of new teachers in the U.S. leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching. Some challenges that prompt new teachers to leave the field include stress, lack of appropriate support, and feeling unprepared to handle behavioral and academic issues among their students. Research supports the finding that teachers…

A community college's success hinges in large part on the effectiveness of its teaching faculty, no more so than in times of major organizational change. However, any large-scale foundational shift requires institutional buy-in, with the onus on leadership to create an environment where everyone is working together toward the same endpoint.…

Research has affirmed the importance of principals and mentors in supporting novice teachers; however, little is known about how teacher leaders contribute to this work. We employed a mixed methods design to examine teacher leaders' contributions to induction by surveying principals, teachers, and other staff (n = 246) and interviewing teacher…

In their plans to carry out the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states universally recognize what New Leaders has long known: "leadership changes everything." In fact, every single state has committed to directing some portion of its federal funding into investments in leadership--from teacher leaders to principals and…

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore and conceptualize how teacher leaders are trained, developed, and supported both formally and informally to be effective in their roles. The study furthered examined teachers perceptions of the Ohio teacher leader endorsement and its impact on them as teacher leaders. The study was conducted…

The rapidly compounding demands placed on school principals for increased student achievement in conjunction with greater levels of accountability have added countless responsibilities to the already interminable job descriptions of school leaders. Therefore, principals are finding the need to assign leadership tasks to their teachers in an…

This paper serves as a phenomenological reflection about the meaning of a co-teaching experience at the college level for two graduate teaching assistants. When two teachers combine planning and teaching efforts it is called co-teaching. As a pedagogical method for both instructors and students, co-teaching was beneficial because it modeled a…

The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics and traits of individuals and buildings in which teacher empowerment is strongest, so that those schools and individuals can be further studied and emulated. An additional purpose of the study is to investigate the relationships between principals and school environment characteristics,…

No Child Left Behind, hereafter referred to as NCLB, has given us an age of accountability for America's schools that includes high stakes tests for students at various grade levels. Those tests are used to measure a child's knowledge of standards in each core subject area including math, science, language arts, and social studies. The standards…

It has become standard practice for teachers to step into the role of "teacher leaders" and perform a variety of curriculum, instruction and assessment tasks for schools and school districts. The literature regarding these Ohio K-12 teacher leaders, who may perform these tasks in addition to or in lieu of regular teaching assignments,…

In the course of engaging with a Mathematics and Science Partnership (MSP) project, we planned a yearlong Leadership Academy that fit under the "train the trainers" model for professional development. Midway through, teacher leaders rejected a traditional conception of leadership based on expertise, individualism, and the transmission of…

Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

In 2010, U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, encapsulated the national concern and immediate need for educational change in order to prepare our students for the 21st century by stating, "The urgency to improve our children's schools has never been greater." Therefore, in order to develop students with the skills and knowledge…