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This postscript uses a framework explaining the influences on principals' practices in order to highlight key findings from the four papers in this journal issue and to surface five insights relate...

This mixed-methods study inquired about characteristics of districts which influence changes in student achievement and how those characteristics are developed. Staff in 49 Ontario districts were surveyed to estimate the status of nine district characteristics on changes in provincial tests of math and language achievement over five years. A cross-case analysis of interview data collected in three high-performing districts provided in-depth descriptions of each of the nine district characteristics. Results indicated that most of the nine district characteristics had significant effects on student achievement. Implications for policy and practice are suggested.

This review of research was prompted by the widespread belief that at least in a significant number of secondary schools, department heads are an underutilized, if not untapped, source of instructional leadership, the type of leadership critical to secondary-school improvement initiatives. Forty-two methodologically diverse empirical studies were used to inquire about department and department-head contributions to secondary-school improvement. Results indicate that department and department-head effects on students are consistently positive, practically meaningful and larger than school effects. Well-functioning departments are powerful centers for improvement. But significant hurdles to effective department-head leadership often minimize its effect, for example, some secondary teacher cultures, some teacher union policies, and some heads’ own conceptions of their roles and responsibilities. Conditions enabling successful department-head leadership are identified.

Based on a synthesis of unpublished transformational school leadership (TSL) research completed during the last 14 years, this study inquired into the nature of TSL and its effects on student achievement using review methods including standard meta-analysis and vote-counting techniques. Results identify a wider range of TSL practices than typically has been measured in previous TSL research. Results also suggest that TSL has small but significant effects on student achievement, some TSL practices are especially powerful explanations of these effects, and a large handful of variables both moderate and mediate TSL effects on students.

This article presents the results of research into the impact of principal turnover on schools, and the ability of schools to mitigate the negative effects of frequent turnover by distributing leadership in the schools. The findings from this qualitative and quantitative analysis show that rapid principal turnover does indeed have a negative effect on a school, primarily affecting the school culture. Where there is high principal turnover, taking a coordinated approach to leadership distribution appears to mitigate at least some of the negative consequences of leadership turnover.

This article identifies characteristics of school districts that have been exceptionally successful in closing gaps in achievement among diverse groups of students, including students in challenging circumstances. Evidence for the paper was provided by 31 studies. These were studies, published in the past ten years, which reported original evidence about the association between one or more district characteristics and some valued set of outcomes, or described one or more practices within a district previously found to be high performing. Ten district characteristics are described and several implications for future policy, research, and practice are outlined.

This study examined data use and conditions influencing data use by typical principals and teachers, as well as the relationship between data use and student performance. The analysis drew upon a multi-method investigation of leadership at the school, district, and state levels. The findings emphasize the leadership of principals in establishing data use purposes and expectations, opportunities, training, access to expertise, and follow-up actions. Principal and teacher use of data is strongly shaped by district leaders in the context of state accountability systems. Statistical evidence linking patterns of data use to achievement test results was weak, and limited to elementary schools.

In this study, we inquired about patterns of leadership distribution, as well as which leadership functions were performed by whom, the characteristics of nonadministrative leaders, and the factors promoting and inhibiting the distribution of leadership functions. We consider our account of distributed leadership in this district to be a probable example of “best practice” at the present time—not perfect, but likely more mature than average by a significant degree. The most noteworthy detail to emerge from our study was the critical part played by formal school and district leaders in helping to foster apparently productive forms of distributed leadership.

This paper uses evidence about transformational forms of leadership in schools provided by 32 empirical studies published between 1996 and 2005 to answer questions about the nature of such leadership, its antecedents, and the variables that both moderate and mediate its effects on students. Results indicate significant, primarily indirect effects of this form of leadership on both student achievement and engagement in school. These effects are mediated by school culture, teachers’ commitment and job satisfaction, and a small number of other variables. Few studies have examined the antecedents or moderators of transformational school leadership.