This study compared PISA 2009 student reading literacy scores with principal perceptions across three countries with varying levels of student performance: Korea, Mexico, and the United States. Seventy-five countries participated in PISA 2009, which measured 15-year-old children's reading achievement and principal perceptions. The study…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the ways principals in three high-needs middle schools enacted core leadership practices in concert with their immediate contexts to institutionalize comprehensive school reforms and support student learning. Research Methods: The schools were selected from a geographically stratified sample of…

Purpose: This article focuses on a specific model of teacher leadership in schools--the studio classroom. In answering the call for more targeted studies of teacher leadership, the study is designed to assist educational leaders in putting in place the organizational and social structures that allow teacher leaders to have the most positive impact…

Purpose: School effectiveness and instructional leadership research over the past 30 years has largely concluded that principal effects on student achievement are small and indirect. It has been assumed that the principal effect is important but mediated through other school factors. Findings: This experimental study found that one-on-one…

Background: Studies addressing pay discrimination for females in education have relied on main effect regression models, mostly examining amount (intercept values) rather than rate of pay (slope coefficients). Purpose: The purpose is to determine if organizational characteristics and human capital endowments purported to influence pay are facially…

Purpose: Schools necessarily employ elements of a bureaucratic structure to organize the complex task of educating large and diverse groups of students--elements such as a hierarchy of authority, a division of labor, policies, rules, and regulations. Although such a structure is useful, there is a danger that school leaders will overemphasize…

Purpose: The No Child Left Behind Act laudably brings social justice and equity issues to the forefront; however, the act's threat- and sanction-driven methods are not only increasing stress levels but potentially causing a rigid response, especially in the growing population of schools labeled "program improvement" (PI). Specifically,…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which school ethnic affiliation (Jewish vs. Arab) and site-based management affected the absence of teachers and school administrators. Research Design: Background individual and organization-level data on the population of elementary and middle-school teachers (52, 056 teachers at 2,…

Background: The paradox of relying on routines and standard practices, which protect institutional functioning from the vagaries of personality, often comes at the cost of thoughtful adaptability. Purpose: The objectives are to conceptualize and apply the construct of mindfulness to schools and to explore trust as a school condition that fosters…

Purpose: The authors adapted distributed cognition theory to provide a detailed account of how school leaders use knowledge of the new programs, existing initiatives, and school contexts to guide policy implementation. Research Design: The study used distributed cognition theory to show how policy implementation studies provide an occasion to…

This article considers the relative impacts of student accountability policies and extended learning programs on the achievement gains of elementary and middle grade students. It shares qualitative and quantitative analyses of an extended learning time initiative implemented in conjunction with a high-stakes testing and retention policy. The…

To date most models of empowerment have focused on teachers' personal empowerment, which is defined as intrinsic task motivation reflecting an employee's orientation to his or her work role. Interestingly, little scholarly attention has been turned to the interaction of empowerment and work-team membership, that is, to empowerment acquired from…

Recent research links the development of a collaborative community of educators to enhanced teaching and learning effectiveness. This study contributes to this research by testing a work group effectiveness model with a sample of teachers from middle school teams. The study assesses the interrelationships among the model's antecedent variables…