Unpacking the Challenges of Leadership at the School and District Level

Reflecting the prevailing sentiment of the public at large, govern-ments in many parts of the world show little patience for the usual pace of educational change. One of the primary reasons for this impatience is the largely uncontested link, in the minds of many policymakers, be-tween a globally competitive national economy and the quality of a na-tion’s schools. As one major consequence of this impatience, govern-ments routinely eschew small-scale trials, pilot studies, and research and evaluation of their preferred policy initiatives, choosing instead to move immediately to large-scale implementation (Hanushek & Meyer, 1996). Large-scale school reform has been underway in many loca-tions—for example, the U.K.; Victoria, Australia; Chicago; New Zea-land; and many U.S. states—for the past 15 years, after a considerable period of dormancy triggered by failed initiatives during the 1960s (Fullan, 1999). While these reform efforts are not identical in all respects, they often share a remarkable number of features, most prominently a cen-tral concern for holding schools more accountable. As a consequence, a much greater emphasis on accountability is a critical part of the con-text in which school and district leaders now work. Furthermore, although initiated at the national or state level, successful implementa-tion of such accountability-oriented reforms depends significantly on the practices of such leaders. For this reason, it is surprising that there has been so little research explicitly examining the nature of effective school and district leadership practices in this accountability context. This chapter consists of two main sections. The first section reviews what we know about the challenges facing leaders in highly accountable contexts and the nature of productive responses on thei