Strong leadership is invaluable to any organization. Effective leaders recruit and develop talent, promote organizational growth, influence change and create positive culture. Extensive research shows this holds true in the nation's schools. Teachers identify principal leadership as one of the most important determinants--more than compensation--in their decisions to stay in a school or the profession. Even more telling, school leadership is found to have one of the greatest influences on student outcomes--second only to classroom instruction--among school-level factors. Effective principals and other school leaders are critical for fostering strong working and learning environments for teachers and their students. This special report serves as an introduction to policies related to school leadership--which is particularly useful to newly elected or appointed officials as they consider policies to more effectively support great school leaders.