Molly Gordon

Linking parent and community involvement with student achievement: Comparing principal and teacher perceptions of stakeholder influence.

Expanding the sources of leadership in schools has been a reform theme since the mid 1980s. Using exploratory factor analysis and regression, we examine the following questions: (1) How does leadership style affect principals’ openness to community involvement? (2) Is a principals openness to community involvement related to student achievement? And (3) How are participatory and shared school leadership structures related to student learning? We base our analysis on a 2005–6 principal survey ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

North Carolina and Nebraska: Two States, Two Policy Cultures, Two Outcomes

N=157

State Leadership for School Improvement: An Analysis of Three States.

\end{document} ) and a teacher survey ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Educational Leadership in the States: A Cultural Analysis

N=4,491

The roots of difference in educational policy: A three-state analysis

\end{document} ) from a Wallace Foundation–funded study, Learning from Leadership, augmented by available state 2005–6 math achievement data. Our results show that principals with more diverse leadership teams are more open to community involvement. Also, teachers’ perceptions of greater parent involvement are positively associated with student math achievement. The article highlights how principals and teachers can better organize their efforts to involve stakeholders for increasing student achievement.

Political Cultures in Education

This chapter summarizes recent evidence about the links between successful leadership and student learning. Results of a wide-ranging review of literature, initially completed several years ago (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004) and regularly updated, are combined with key findings from a large-scale study of leadership and student learning currently underway in US schools. Results from the study reported in this chapter are based on responses by more than 3,400 teachers and 130 school administrators to the first of two rounds of surveys. Also included are selected results the first three rounds of district and school site visits including observations of instruction in more than 165 classrooms and interviews with 32 principals and 180 teachers, along with based members, community members and district staff.