How educational leaders initiate and sustain change is often hotly debated by those inside and outside of the system. Given the many reform initiatives of the past 30 years, and the resulting changes public educators have made lurching from initiative to initiative, one must ask if public education has truly improved. The answer to why public schools have not improved in mass can be found by examining how the organization, culture and leadership of public schools prevents reform efforts from altering instructional practices in the classroom in a systematic way. The Consortium for Educational Change (CEC) is an association of Illinois school districts who have banded together to build continuous improvement systems and processes and ensure that all leaders learn from each other. The group formed in 1987 with a mission to, "Build collaborative structures, processes, and cultures with and among key stakeholders including labor and management to transform educational systems to continuously improve student learning and achievement." (CEC, 2016a). One of the core services offered to member districts is the System Assessment. It is intended to assist a district or school identify strengths and opportunities for improvement aligned to the effective practices of a continuous improvement framework. The System Assessment is a systematic method of organizational self-study that includes an organizational self-study and reflection, an external team review of the self-study and reflection documentation provided by the district or school, and site visit to the district or school. During the visit, a review team comprised of teachers, building administrators, district administrators, school board members, and CEC consultants interviews stakeholders and examines evidence to provide an independent analysis of the self-study. This qualitative research study was planned and implemented using the constructivist framework. Three theoretical frameworks guide this research: systems theory, continuous improvement theory, and distributed leadership. This comparative case study examined the leadership actions of staff in two middle schools as they underwent a voluntary continuous improvement process called the CEC System Assessment. This study examined the efforts to prepare the self-assessment, and subsequent efforts to use the feedback from the visit to drive continuous improvement efforts. Second, this study examined how district and school leadership practices in particular contributed toward the accomplishment of continuous improvement efforts. The study participants' responses were consistent with the research literature in that schools should focus on building the collective capacity of staff to look at their own culture and internal processes rather than lurching from one improvement initiative to another or the latest prepackaged program in an attempt to adapt to external pressures. The participants also echoed the importance of a new school leadership paradigm that breaks from the common authoritarian, bureaucratic model to a more distributed approach where teacher leaders have a voice in shaping the development of goals, strategies and the monitoring of performance. Participants recognized that the shift in leadership from authoritarian to distributed, having a common improvement framework that is understood by all, and focusing on the organization, culture, and collective capacity of staff within the school will ultimately result in long term success for students. Further research should be carried out in more than two schools, particularly schools with different grade spans, numbers of students, geographic location, and financial resources. A second recommendation would be to conduct a similar study with one school that has implemented the continuous improvement framework and demonstrated a high degree of changes in school climate and student achievement and one school that implemented the framework, but has not achieved results to the same level. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]