Except where noted, all publications are available for free download at www.wallacefoundation.org.

1. Assessing Learning-Centered Leadership: Connections to Research, Professional Standards, and Current Practices, Ellen Goldring, Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2007.

Effective school leadership is key to student academic success, but the development of effective school leadership has been seriously hampered by the lack of technically sound tools to assess and monitor leader performance. A team from Vanderbilt developed such an assessment system. This paper presents the research base and conceptual framework for their learning-centered tool. The Vanderbilt assessment system contrasts with existing tools by focusing 100 percent on topics related to instructional leadership and by clearly defining and measuring the leader behaviors that can improve learning. Unlike existing tools, it also assesses individual leaders and leadership teams.

1. Central Office Transformation for District-Wide Teaching and Learning Improvement, Meredith I. Honig, Michael A. Copland, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2010.

One of the first and most comprehensive studies of its kind, this report identifies five major changes that can help transform the focus of school district central offices from administration and compliance to improving classroom instruction. The report is based on an in-depth study of central office reform efforts in Atlanta, New York City, and Oakland, California. The changes identified include the offices' strong engagement with school principals on improving instruction in their schools and the reorganizing and reculturing of every central office so it centers its work on the classroom. The report is part of a series by University of Washington researchers that investigates how leaders can contribute to improved student achievement, particularly in challenging schools and districts.

1. Central Office Transformation Toolkit, Meredith I. Honig, The University of Washington Center for Education Leadership, 2013.

Principals are key to improving teaching and learning in schools, but how can school district central offices give principals the support they need? Three tools designed by education researchers at the University of Washington are meant to help. Two focus on the redesign of central offices in ways that foster effective leadership in schools. The third is an aid for principal supervisors seeking to develop the instructional capabilities of the principals they oversee.

1. Districts Matter: Cultivating the Principals Urban Schools Need, Lee Mitgang, The Wallace Foundation, 2013.

An effective school requires an effective leader, but great principals rarely just happen; they are cultivated. This Wallace Perspective draws on a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to show how urban school districts can play a major role in ensuring they have principals who can boost teaching and learning in troubled schools. Key actions include establishing selective hiring procedures and providing mentoring to novice leaders.

1. Educational Leadership Policy Standards ISLLC, The Wallace Foundation, 2008.

The development of the ISLLC (Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium) in 1996 was a milestone in helping states and school districts define how leaders can positively influence learning and establishing guidelines to ensure that they do so. More than forty states have since adopted the ISLLC standards or used them as the basis for their own standards. In many of these states, the standards are playing an important role in informing key policies affecting the training, licensing, induction, professional development, and evaluation of school leaders. These guidelines have been revised by the Council of Chief State School Officers, applying the growth in knowledge about effective leadership practices in 2008 and will be refreshed in Fall 2015. This publication spells out the changes and their significance for improving leadership policy and practice.

1. Evaluation of the School Administration Manager Project, Brenda J. Turnbull, M. Bruce Haslam, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2009.

From its beginnings in a handful of schools in Louisville, Kentucky, the School Administration Manager Project has sought to help principals delegate some of their administrative and managerial tasks and spend more of their time interacting with teachers, students, and others on instructional matters. Often, this has meant hiring a new school-level employee—a school administration manager, or SAM—to assume noninstructional tasks. This report examines the results to date of the SAM project, which involved schools in thirty-seven districts in nine states at the time of the study. The analysis, by Policy Studies Associates, finds that this approach can indeed increase the amount of time principals devote to instruction each week. But it also emphasizes the critical importance of ensuring that the project is well aligned with district improvement goals.

1. Getting Principal Mentoring Right: Lessons from the Field, Wallace Foundation, 2007.

Mentoring for principals during their first years on the job, once a relative rarity, is now required by half the nation's states—a major advance from a long-standing sink-or-swim attitude toward new school leaders and a belated sign of recognition of the role that well-prepared principals can play in lifting student achievement. But an analysis of this new trend by Wallace concludes that, too often, many such programs are not yet tailored to develop principals capable of driving better teaching and learning in their schools—and shaking up the status quo when necessary. Getting Principal Mentoring Right: Lessons from the Field features close-up looks at mentoring programs in two school districts—Jefferson County Public Schools and New York City through its NYC Leadership Academy—that have put particular emphasis on getting mentoring right, with varying degrees of success to date. Based on its analysis, the report proposes several quality guidelines that might be broadly useful to states and districts thinking either about adopting new programs or improving existing ones.

1. How Leaders Invest Staffing Resources for Learning Improvement, Margaret L. Plecki, Michael S. Knapp, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2009.

Urban districts and their leaders face a set of common challenges with respect to staffing high-needs schools: how to maximize the quality and longevity of high-quality teaching staff; how to deploy and support novice teachers; how to manage and minimize teacher mobility and attribution; and how to align the diversity of the teaching staff with the diversity of the student body. This report is part of a series by researchers from the University of Washington's Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy that investigates a range of topics concerned with how leaders can effectively and equitably contribute to improved student achievement, particularly in challenging school and district contexts. Based on their analyses of four urban districts and fourteen schools, the authors of this report describe a new way for school leaders to frame their decision making about staff resource allocations: “Rather than relying on the traditional pattern of isolating a funding need and allocating resources to meet that specific need, leaders need to consider the types of approaches and strategies for investing resources in coherent, effective, equitable, and sustainable ways.”

1. How Leadership Influences Student Learning, Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, and Kyla Wahlstrom, The Wallace Foundation, 2004.

Leadership not only matters but also is second only to teaching among school-related factors that affect student learning. And its impact is greatest in schools with the greatest needs, according to a comprehensive review of evidence on school leadership by researchers at the Universities of Minnesota and Toronto. This report, the first in a series that seeks to establish how leadership promotes student achievement, summarizes the basics of successful leadership and sets out what leaders must do—including setting a clear vision, supporting and developing a talented staff, and building a solid organizational structure—to meet the challenge of school reform.

1. Leading Change Step-by-Step: Tactics, Tools, and Tales, Jody Spiro, Jossey–Bass, 2010.

The subject of leading change is of paramount importance for leaders these days because it seems that, more than ever, the only constant is change. It is crucial not only to have a vision but also to be skilled at translating that vision into reality and sustaining it. Leaders must know where to start, how to win support and cope with resistance, and how to institutionalize the change initiative.

Leading Change Step-by-Step offers a comprehensive and tactical guide for change leaders. It is based on field-tested approaches that have been used for more than a decade in a wide variety of organizations, including K–12 schools and districts, universities, international agencies, and nonprofits. The book is filled with proven tactics for implementing change successfully, with helpful tools to put change efforts into practice—including rubrics, helpful questions to ask, and common mistakes to avoid. Also included are stories of struggle and success that show how this approach has been used effectively in twenty-two states and internationally. The tools guide leaders through analyzing situations, identifying stakeholders, and working with them effectively to bring about the desired results.

1. Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning, Karen Seashore Louis, Kenneth Leithwood, Kyla L. Wahlstrom, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2010.

The largest in-depth study of school leadership to date, this report gathers and analyzes quantitative data confirming that education leadership has a strong impact on student achievement as measured by student test scores. The study shows that leadership makes its mark largely by strengthening a school's professional community—an environment where teachers work together to improve classroom instruction. It also finds that rapid turnover of principals reduces student achievement. In addition, the study shows that although the principal remains the central source of leadership in schools, he or she is far from the only source. Indeed, the highest performing schools operate by a collective leadership that involves many interested players—including parents and teachers—in decision making.

1. Leadership for Learning Improvement in Urban Schools, Bradley S. Portin, Michael S. Knapp, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2009.

This report is another part of a series by researchers from the University of Washington's Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy that investigates a range of topics concerned with how leaders can effectively and equitably contribute to improved student achievement, particularly in challenging school and district contexts. The questions examined in this report included (1) what it means for leaders to work in a demanding environment; (2) what supervisory leaders (principals, assistant principals, department heads) do in these kinds of settings; and (3) what nonsupervisory leaders do. Examining fifteen schools in four diverse districts, the authors conclude, among other things, that in these demanding settings, principals need to behave as “leaders of instructional teams, as much as individual instructional leaders.”

1. Make Room for the Principal Supervisors, Jennifer Gill, The Wallace Foundation, 2013.

This story from the field describes how Denver Public Schools hired more people to coach and evaluate its principals—despite tight budgets. A major feature of the district's overhaul was what's known in the business world as “reducing the span of control,” or decreasing the number of people a supervisor manages so he or she can better support each one.

1. Making Time for Instructional Leadership, Ellen Goldring, Ellen Goldring, Jason A. Grissom, Christine M. Neumerski, Joseph Murphy, Richard Blissett and Andy Porter, The Wallace Foundation, July 2015.

This report describes the “SAM process,” an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among school-related influences on student success. But principals often find themselves mired in matters of day-to-day administration and have little time to cultivate better teachers who can help students learn. The SAM process is designed to free up principals' time so they can focus on improving instruction in classrooms.

1. Rethinking Leadership: The Changing Role of Principal Supervisors, Amanda Corcoran, Michael Casserly, et al., The Wallace Foundation, 2013.

This report, among the first to provide a detailed look at the principal supervisor role, finds that these administrators often face daunting problems in carrying out their jobs effectively—including having to oversee too many schools (an average of twenty-four). The report offers recommendations for how districts can improve matters. One suggestion is to make sure supervisors are matched with schools suitable to their skills and expertise.

1. School Leadership in Action: Principal Practices, WNET, The Wallace Foundation, 2015.

This video series follows 10 principals in four metropolitan areas through their workdays, showing how they use the five practices of effective school leadership to improve teaching and learning in their classrooms.

1. Shaping a Vision of Academic Success for all Students: A Roadmap of key Processes and Effective Practice. Lawrenceville: Georgia: Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement, The Wallace Foundation, January 2015.

This handbook, written by eight principals from urban districts, offers advice from those in the field about the important role played by setting an inspirational vision for the school community. The authors also provide experience-based advice on how to develop a vision and put into action.

1. The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning, The Wallace Foundation, 2013.

This Wallace Foundation publication summarizes a decade of research and work in school leadership to identify what it is that effective school principals do. It concludes that they carry out five key actions particularly well, including shaping a vision of academic success for all students and cultivating leadership in others.