| Summary: | School leadership provides a critical bridge between student success initiatives
and their impact on students in Texas schools. This study, which was one of four
cohort studies conducted concurrently in Region V Education Service Center (ESC),
Texas, examined the relationship between student performance, as measured by the
Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), and leadership practices of
elementary school principals in Region V ESC schools.
The investigation procedures for this study involved an analysis of the responses
from principals and site-based decision making (SBDM) committee members from
their respective campuses to the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by
Kouzes and Posner (2003) which evaluates the use of five identified leadership
practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable
Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. Student performance information for the
participating elementary campuses was obtained from the Texas Education Agency
Academic Excellence Indicator System database. This study found no linear relationship between perceived leadership practices of
elementary principals and the academic success of students as measured by the Texas
Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). However, a relationship between these
variables is strongly supported by the literature. The data were an indication that
Region V elementary principals embrace the leadership practices identified by
Kouzes and Posner at least moderately (between the 30th and 69th percentile) or at a
higher level (70th percentile or above).
As a group, the principals in this study rated themselves higher overall in regard
to perceived leadership practices than did their observers, but only significantly
higher on three of the five individual practices. Principals and their observers agreed
that the practice Enable Others to Act was the most frequently noted followed by the
practices Model the Way and Encourage the Heart. The practices with the least
reported frequency were Challenge the Process and Inspire a Shared Vision. Further
analysis of the data showed that the demographic variables of gender, ethnicity, age,
and years of experience in the field of education did not have an effect on survey
responses of the study participants.
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