The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of building principals toward superintendent leadership responsibilities and practices of goal setting, nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction, board alignment with support of district goals, monitoring goals for achievement and instruction, use of resources to support the goals for achievement and instruction, and defined autonomy in high and low achieving school districts with high and low superintendent turnover. A survey instrument was created to analyze the perceptions of building principals from 224 school districts within New York State. The districts were identified as having low student achievement or high student achievement based on the average mastery rate from the 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08 English Regents exams. The districts were further disaggregated into districts with low or high superintendent turnover based upon the number of superintendents who served within the district within a five year span. For this study the researcher utilized a 56-item survey instrument to analyze building principal perceptions of the superintendents' implementation of the responsibilities and practices identified by Marzano and Waters' meta-analysis (2006). Part A of the survey instrument consisted of four demographic questions that compiled building principals' gender, building level assignments, years of experience, and the number of superintendents served under. Part B of the survey instrument consisted of 52 questions that used a five point Likert scale to measure building principal responses to items ranging from 1- strongly disagree to 5- strongly agree. A factor analysis was conducted on the 108 completed surveys. The factor analysis of Part II of the Superintendent Roles and Responsibilities survey instrument (Appendix A) resulted in the consolidation of the six factors into four factors. The remaining factors were labeled the Establishment and Monitoring of Research Based Goals for Achievement and Instruction, Board Alignment in The Support of The District Goal Setting Process, Monitoring The Use of Resources to Support Goals for Achievement and Instruction, and Superintendent Relationships with Building Principals; Utilizing Resources to Support the Goals for Achievement and Instruction. The findings from this study indicated building principals from high achievement school districts rated their superintendents' implementation of the Establishment and Monitoring of Research Based Goals for Achievement and Instruction higher than their colleagues in low achievement districts regardless of superintendent turnover. There was also a significant difference between the means and standard deviations on the superintendents' responsibility and practice of Board Alignment in The Support of The District Goal Setting Process between districts characterized as low achieving with high turnover and high achieving districts with low turnover. In districts characterized as high achieving with high superintendent turnover there was a strong positive correlation between the building principals' building level assignment and the superintendents' responsibilities and practice of Monitoring the Use of Resources to Support Goals for Achievement and Instruction. The results of the regression analysis indicated the Establishment and Monitoring of Research Based Goals for Achievement and Instruction was the strongest predictor of student achievement. These results suggested that building principals who perceived their superintendents as engaging in the practice of Establishing and Monitoring Research Based Goals were more likely to be from districts with high student achievement. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]