Catholic educators want students to do their best academically and become good Catholics. Challenges that make this goal difficult to accomplish include a changing environment within the Catholic school: staffs that were almost entirely composed of priests or religious are now almost entirely lay, and the tension between the school as an educational institution and the school as a faith community has increased. In addition, both public and Catholic schools experience the loose coupling between the work of the principal and the effectiveness of the school. Finally, high schools are more diversified than elementary schools, academically and geographically. A Catholic school principal must provide both academic and religious leadership to have an effective Catholic school. A principal can help to make a school a more effective environment by working to develop its distinctly Catholic culture. The keys to leadership are vision and inspiration. To develop a school culture, the principal must be committed, purposeful, and involved in managing the values of the school; painstaking in the hiring and development of teachers; and adept at building coalitions with competing constituencies to reach desired goals. (MLF)