Research has consistently shown that the quality of teachers working with students has a greater impact on academic achievement than any other school-related factor. However, close to a third of new teachers continue to leave the profession within their first 5 years of employment. In particular, hard-to-staff rural schools have struggled to…

Effective K-12 leaders remain a central concern for schools and communities of all types. The purpose of this research is to examine critically the literature on issues facing leaders in rural and urban settings and present a synthesis of cross-cutting themes. The authors reviewed the theoretical and empirical literature on K-12 leadership issues…

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing…

An analysis of survey data is used to examine the practices used to hire teachers, the level of principal autonomy within the process, the attributes sought in teachers, and to compare each based upon the characteristics of schools and of principals. Findings indicate that urban and low-performing schools (and the principals of these schools) are…