How an Integrated Model of School Leadership Influences Student Achievement: A Replication Study

• In Event: How School Leaders Impact Student Learning and Achievement: Leadership Principles, Models, and Effects Revisited

Abstract

Objectives
A compelling body of evidence now justifies the claim that school leadership has significant effects on student achievement and that these effects are mostly indirect, mediated by conditions in the school, classroom and family. A key challenge for leadership researchers now is to identify those mediating variables which (a) have practically significant effects on students and (b) are malleable by leadership intervention. The study reported in this paper replicates an earlier study addressing this challenge (Authors, 2010). The current study used approximately similar evidence collected in the significantly different context of USA schools.

Framework
Like its predecessor, this study examines the extent to which an integrated model of school leadership influences student learning. With its roots in both transformational (e.g. AUTHORS 2012) and instructional (e.g., Hallinger, 2003) leadership, effects on students of the practices associated with this leadership model are mediated by variables on four “paths”, the rational (eg. academic press), emotions (e.g. collective teacher efficacy), organizational (collaborative culture) and family (e.g., parents’ expectations for their children’s success at school) paths. Previous evidence, including the study being replicated, justified testing a series of hypotheses. These about the amount of variation in student achievement explained by variables on each of the four paths, the relative contribution of each path, as a whole, to student achievement and the extent of school leadership influence on each variable and path.

Methods
Evidence for the study included an achieved sample of 1779 teacher responses to an online survey measuring distributed leadership practices in their 82 schools and variables mediating leaders’ effects on students. Evidence of student achievement in each school was provided by the testing program, the Texas STAAR Percentage at Phase-in Satisfactory Standard or Above, combining all subjects and all grades. Students’ socio-economic status was measured by EcoDis, a data analytics firm outside of Houston. This firm has the access to the states data management system, PEIMS.

Results
The four paths model as a whole explained 43% of the variation in student achievement. Variables on the Rational, Emotions, and Family Paths explain similarly significant amounts of that variation. Variables on the Organizational Path were unrelated to student achievement. Leadership had its greatest influence on the Organizational Path and least influence on the Family Path.

Conclusions and Implications
School leaders and leadership researchers should be guided much more directly by existing evidence about school, classroom, and family variables with powerful effects on student learning as they make their school improvement and research design decisions.

References
Hallinger, P. (2003). Leading educational change: Reflections on the practice of instructional and transformational leadership. Cambridge Journal of Education, 33(3), 329-351.

Authors (2010).

Authors (2012).

Authors

• kenneth A. leithwood, OISE/University of Toronto

• Jingping Sun, The University of Alabama

• Randall E. Schumacker, The University of Alabama