Book Description
Collective, not individual, leadership in schools has a greater impact on student achievement; when principals and teachers share leadership responsibilities, student achievement is higher; and schools having high student achievement also display a vision for student achievement and teacher growth. Those are just a few of the insights into school leadership presented in a new report, "Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning." Presented by the Wallace Foundation, the 338-page report attempted to connect leadership and learning. The study looked at "collective leadership" in schools which was defined as "the sum of influence exercised on school decisions by those educators, parents and students associated with the school." Positive effects were found comparing collective to individual leadership. Among them were: (1) Collective leadership has a stronger influence on student learning than any individual source of leadership; (2) Almost all people associated with high-performing schools have greater influence on school decisions than is the case with people in low performing schools; (3) Compared to all teacher respondents, teachers from high-performing schools attribute greater influence to teacher teams, parents, and students; (4) In all schools, principals and district leaders exercise the most influence on decisions; and (5) Teacher motivation had the strongest relationship with student achievement. When looking at parent involvement as part of collective leadership, the researchers found that greater district level support for greater parental involvement in schools led to more diversity of membership on site councils. However, district leadership did not impact how open principals were to community and parental involvement outside of site councils.