This study focused on the impact of principal leadership strategies on student achievement in three academically challenged rural schools in Northeastern North Carolina. The problem is that some rural schools still struggle to increase student achievement in spite of the availability of leadership strategies that lead to improved academic outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the school administrators' perceptions of the effectiveness of leadership strategies at improving student outcomes in consistently underperforming, rural schools. The conceptual frameworks of Hallinger and Murphy related to instructional leadership, as well as the Ontario Leadership Framework, served as a foundation for this study. Using a phenomenological qualitative design, the study was conducted in the rural Harrington School District in Northeastern North Carolina with a population of nine school administrators and a final sample size of five administrators. Individual semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection tool. A deductive coding schema was used to manually code and categorize the participants' responses based on the leadership strategies from the Ontario Leadership Framework. Emergent themes for leadership strategies perceived to improve student learning included providing instructional leadership, building teacher capacity, building a collaborative culture, creating a vision, and engaging parents and community. The findings revealed that although the leadership strategies led to growth for the teachers, impact on student learning outcomes was not yet fully evident. These findings suggest that although the principal's impact on student learning may actually begin with working with the teachers, the school leader's understanding of the connection between evidence-based leadership strategies and principal leadership standards could assist with more targeted approaches to improve student achievement in academically challenged rural schools. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]