This study is designed to identify the effective implementation practices that special education administrators enact to alleviate the negative and enforce the positive effects of contextual factors when implementing comprehensive school reform. Two research questions were designed to address this issue. Research Question One sought to identify school administrators' plan-implementation practices and Research Question Two sought to determine if the plan-implementation practices of school administrators affected academic performance as defined by the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB). A survey was distributed to special education teachers with the goal of identifying the transformational leadership plan-implementation practices demonstrated by those administrators who successfully implemented comprehensive school reform. Teacher responses were grouped based on their school's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): those teachers whose schools met AYP for two or more years constituted one group, and those whose schools did not meet AYP for two or more years were placed in another. Factor analysis was initially employed to identify the dependent variables that indicated teachers' perception of their administrators' implementation practices and procedures. Three dependent variables were identified: Staff Support, Inclusive Focus, and Plan-inPlace. Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the three dependent variables. The results indicated that the two AYP groups differed significantly for the variables of Staff Support and Inclusive Focus, but not for Plan-in-Place. These results serve to answer the two research questions and--more importantly--support the underlying hypothesis that special education administrators can benefit from focusing on implementation practices and procedures and give less attention to the plan itself. [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.]