This special report provides context and examples of new legislation impacting preparation, certification, induction, professional development, evaluation and compensation for leaders of schools and districts.

Many layers of education governance press upon U.S. schools, so we separated state actors into those internal to and those external to the system. In the process, we unpacked the traditional state-local dichotomy. Using interview data (n = 45) from six case-study states, we analyzed local leaders', state-internal actors', and state-external…