A consensus is emerging about how school leaders affect school performance, and how important principals are to improved student learning. Yet the national reform policies--No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top (RTT)--incorporate assumptions about school and district leadership that are very much at odds with this research. NCLB and RTT call for market-based strategies--choice, charters, merit incentives, etc.--to drive improvement. These approaches might be characterized as corporate-style leadership, but there is little precedence for this approach in educational leadership, and little evidence that it produces results different from more traditional approaches to schooling.