URBAN PRINCIPALS' SECOND ORDER CHANGE LEADERSHIP.

Urban school leaders have challenges in continually improving student achievement and making change as quickly as needed. To address this problem 37 non-Title I principals completed an on-line survey, Principal's Actions Survey (PAS), based on the seven responsibilities for second order change identified by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005). Principals were also asked what actions they took to improve student achievement and to which actions they attributed improvement in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) subgroups. While principals indicated that they implemented the seven responsibilities, there was not a significant relationship between their overall PAS score and student achievement. The principals' responses were compared to results in an earlier study (La Cava, 2009) using the PAS scores of Title I urban elementary principals in the same geographic area and the comparison revealed that the Title I principals had a significantly higher PAS score and reported a significantly higher implementation of ideals/beliefs and monitoring/evaluating. Principals identified actions to which they attributed change in AYP subgroup performance aligned with principal action themes (Taylor, 2010a) of focusing the culture on learning, using data-based decision-making, personally investing in the change, and making decisions for student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]