A large and growing body of evidence over the past several decades has shown that school leadership is a key factor in improving school performance and student outcomes. Increasingly, funders and developers of school leadership programs are articulating talent development frameworks, or leadership development pipelines, that conceive of school leadership development as identifying, recruiting, developing, monitoring, compensating, and retaining talented school leaders. However, states' systems to support leadership development have received relatively scant attention and resources. This gap spurred NASBE in partnership with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) to: (1) examine the problem from a state policy perspective; (2) to offer a framework, guidance, and resources to help states develop and keep effective leaders; (3) provide examples of promising practices for rural schools; and (4) share insights from partner organizations. This report details the Leadership Study Group's recommendations. [The following is a companion piece to this report, "State Leadership Development Policies: An Analysis of 50 States and Territories," see ED582122.]