The purpose of this qualitative study was to discover crucial elements that serve as the foundation for developing effective, sustainable school-university partnerships within teacher preparation programs. This study employed an instrumental case study guided by the distributed leadership theory to understand the operational leadership process of developing and sustaining a school-university partnership within a teacher preparation program. Data from this study consisted of partnership leader interviews and essential partnership documents. Findings of this study included the following: leaders recognize personnel with defined roles within the partnership, leaders believe open communication is vital to the partnership, leaders perceive a positive relationship between the district and the program, and leaders believe the partnership is mutually beneficial. The elements crucial to developing and sustaining an effective school-university partnership within teacher preparation programs identified by this study are mutual needs, mutual benefits, defined personnel roles, open communication, shared personnel, honesty, trustworthiness, and shared culture. [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.]