Text

theses

Despite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s focus on education reform, many schools in America continue to produce failing academic results. Racial as well as socioeconomic achievement gaps persist. Literature on school improvement offers viable guidance for supports (Bryk et al. 2010) and leadership tasks (Leithwood et al., 2010) needed for schools improvement. Two issues persist: high need schools that are most likely to have low achievement are also least likely to have strong supports, and the context of these schools makes leadership more complex and demanding. This “dissertation of practice” uses case studies of two principals in the Northeast Urban School District (pseudonym) to determine how principals organize their leadership structure for improvement. The cases illustrate the different ways that leaders organize their schools to ensure strong supports in each of the areas Bryk et al. (2010) suggest. Findings show that the design and implantation of supports can look different when leaders adopt different leadership structures. These differences can result from a variety of factors including the gender of the principal. This study addresses a persisting gap in the literature on effective leadership for turnaround, as “Not enough research has been done in improving schools in serious difficulty to produce a definitive model of improvement of these schools,” (Leithwood et al., 2010, p. 13). The importance of this study goes beyond adding to the literature a more in depth look on how principals design and implement leadership structures. The researcher used the insights gained through this “dissertation of practice” to re-organize the leadership structure of her own school, resulting in real improvements in the school she led.

ETD_8599

Ed.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by J. N. Pellegrine

doi:10.7282/T300058R

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.