The study explores the implementation of teacher evaluation models and federal education policies, particularly AchieveNJ, in an urban public school district in New Jersey. It focuses on principals' experiences and perceptions, uncovering their challenges and thoughts on the policy's effectiveness in enhancing teacher performance and student…

Washington Hunt is an urban community school attempting to balance the implementation of equity initiatives that meet the needs of minoritized students and families while preventing the adoption of deficit perspectives among school staff. The purpose of this case is to describe how "deficit-creep"--the subtle infusion of deficit-based…

With the expansion of performance-based incentives, there is growing interest in understanding how they affect leadership quality and composition. This paper studies a reform in a large urban public school district that ties principal compensation to their performance. Using a regression discontinuity design, I investigate the effect of…

Gentrification is happening in cities all across the United States. Consequently, some Black communities that were intentionally segregated and under-resourced are experiencing capital investments and demographic changes. These gentrification-induced racial and socioeconomic shifts impact many local institutions, namely school districts. Given…

We conducted an inductive analysis of 166 interviews from a longitudinal study of 26 Chicago Public School principals. Test-based accountability pressures played a visible role in principals' views of and relations with parents. Some principals reported banning parents from classrooms based on the need to protect instructional time to raise test…

This study provides a historical analysis of the Chicago Public Schools major reform policies and initiatives and their implications for educational leaders and principals in urban areas during the mayoral term of Rahm Emanuel. This analysis includes detailed reform initiatives implemented under several mayors and CEOs leading up to Mayor Rahm…

This research study examined how school leaders internalize new state-level reading policy aligned with the body of research known as the Science of Reading and how they make sense of district expectations to make decisions for their school community and its impact on students at-risk for reading difficulty. The Ready to Read Act is a Maryland…

Exploring how school leaders address underrepresented student voices, meaning those of marginalized experiences along the continuum of social identity including though not limited to race, class, gender, immigration, and LGBTQ issues in schools is more essential than ever following the novel coronavirus of 2019 (COVID-19). Principals' social…

This paper explores and charts the reasons why some primary school headteachers in "disadvantaged" London schools remain in post at a time of rising rates of attrition of school leaders and headteachers. Instead of exploring the reasons why headteachers are quitting their posts in urban schools, this study examines the retention issue…

This research examines social justice leaders' community activism in response to three local and national political contexts. Grounded in literature that advances ecological models of school leadership, we analyzed how seven urban school leaders conceptualized community activism as linked to school outcomes, and how leaders conducted activism…

Purpose: This study builds on research scrutinizing school autonomy in policy and school governance by shifting the focus from a formal structural view of autonomy to examining how principals negotiate autonomy in their daily work. Drawing on multiple dimensions of autonomy and street-level bureaucracy, this study examined how principals, as both…

Educators often invoke the term "care" to describe why they entered the field and what compels them to continue. This book argues that care, as typically described and enacted, is not sufficient for leading schools, particularly those serving Black and Latinx children. Instead, school leaders need to embrace "radical care."…

Teachers at all educational levels and disciplines are leaving the profession at a rapid rate across the United States with numbers increasing since the COVID-19 pandemic. Retention tools and strategies are critical to the success of a school and school district. The purpose of this single case study was to explore urban high school principals'…

This study extends research on school-based teacher collaboration from single country to comparative settings in Chile and Portugal. Based on interviews with school teachers and principals, the study focused on collaboration engagement and factors conditioning its modalities and depth. Findings indicate that more than country differences and…

Educational leadership is a widely discussed topic in educational science. However, although the study of social networks in (informal) educational settings is gaining interest in recent years, the intersection between leadership and online social networks has received limited attention. This article investigates the informal sets of networks in…