Participants in this study, representing grades 6-12 practitioners in two schools with persistently lower scholar achievement and graduation rates, shared their experiences through open-ended surveys, semi-structured interviews, and reflexive journaling. The study employed an inductive coding process and triangulation of data sources to identify…

Technology has changed the way people live, from use of the Internet to the way they communicate with text messages and e-mails. This change is also evident in the education system. This study traced how principals' leadership roles have changed in the school setting because digital natives and society, in general, have become technologically…

The school principal's role in determining the academic achievement of students has been an agenda of controversy among scholars in the field of educational leadership. Several studies, have been carried out, over the years, to resolve this controversy. However, the findings so far have not produced consistent outcomes pointing to the need for…

A number of factors contribute to the academic performance of the teachers and teachers' perceptions of their principals' leadership behaviors are one of them. To raise the academic performance of teachers, every progressive country invests expansive resources and huge budget on teachers' professional development programs all over the world.…

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 explored…

The purpose of this study was to identify the principal behaviors that would define an instructional leader as being a data-driven school administrator and to assess current school administrators' levels of being data-driven. This research attempted to examine the relationship between the degree to which a principal was data-driven and the…

No matter how well an educator evaluation system is designed, it can only be as effective as those who are actually implementing it in the trenches (Stronge, 1993). Unfortunately, many educational reforms at the school level have entirely failed or have failed to be implemented as designed. While much of the current educator evaluation research is…

The assistant principal is often overlooked in school leadership literature, yet in recent years has grown to be a vital part of secondary schools (Marshall & Hooley, 2006). This descriptive study seeks to expand on the work of Marshall and Hooley (2006), which serves as a primer in the study of assistant principals. In an era of increased…

Drawing on ethnographic research from a small urban high school serving predominantly low-income students in a large northeastern city, this case explores how a school leader seeks to improve the school's graduation rates by analyzing student data. It asks readers to consider the overall organization of the meeting, the role of the principal, the…

In 2005, Loris (SC) High School was ranked near the bottom of all high schools in South Carolina. The newly appointed principal, Trevor Strawderman, had been the school's assistant principal. He knew that literacy presented the biggest challenge at Loris: 74% of the students in 9th and 10th grade were reading below grade level. Because of the low…

"The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Collaborating for Student Success (2009)" was conducted by Harris Interactive and is twenty-sixth in a series sponsored by MetLife since 1984 to give voice to those closest to the classroom. This "MetLife Survey" examines the views of teachers, principals and students about respective roles and…

Research has begun to show that certain schoolwide characteristics--such as student-centered learning environments, leadership, and safety--can be important for improving student outcomes. In keeping with these insights, school improvement efforts around the country are becoming less narrowly focused on the performance of individual students and…

The purpose of this study is to build on an emergent research base for academic optimism by testing the construct and its relationship to student achievement and organizational citizenship behaviors in schools in a sample of public high schools. All participants in this study were full-time teachers, guidance counselors, and other full-time…

This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…

Schools today are more data rich than ever, requiring staff members to develop their data literacy--that is, their knowledge of how to use assessment data with other types of data to identify areas of effectiveness and to target instructional improvement efforts. Administrators and teachers are expected to use combinations of data (diagnostic and…