While past studies on school district decentralization found that central office leaders can limit school leaders' decision-making power, the studies did not examine how they do so. We investigated this in eight elementary schools in two large urban school systems with official policies of school site-based decision-making. We found that even…

Critics of standards-based reform often cite an accountability policy environment that disproportionately affects teachers compared with principals and district officials. We directly examine this disproportionality. In our three study states of Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky, we use survey analysis to understand how policy environments for district…

The Middle-Grades Leadership Development (MLD) Project was designed to develop principal leaders and leadership teams who create high-performing middle-grades schools. Designed by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, the four-year project was funded from 2013 to 2017 by a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3)…