Blazing New Trails - Connexions

138 CRITICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
instruction and to assist their teachers in acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to
succeed (Levine & Stark, 1982; Towns et al., 2001; Uchiyama & Wolf, 2002). They provide
campus-based professional development programs that target overall instructional weaknesses
and target individual teachers for improvement employing facilitators and full-time resident
trainers. They attend to student performance on a class-by-class basis using quantitative data
such as test scores and assessments and then use that data for decision making.
Effective inner-city schools have additional characteristics consistent with the general
literature on effective schools: the leaders promote strong and substantial parental
involvement, and parents are accorded great respect by the principals. They are encouraged to
come any time to sit in or assist with classroom lessons. As a result, there is a presence of
parents on a daily basis (Cole-Henderson, 2000; Towns et al., 2001; Wang et al., 1997). Such
involvement can be partly attributable to a pleasant school climate and attractive physical
facilities in these schools (Wang et al., 1997). There is also evidence that leaders are going the
extra mile to make their school facilities attractive (Towns et al., 2001; Uchiyama & Wolf,
2002). Additionally, effective inner-city schools are friendly and protective of their teachers
(Wang et al., 1997).
Principals in high-achieving low-SES schools do not accept the idea of barriers to their
students’ success (Towns et al., 2001). They set high expectations and goals for students and
teachers and expect everyone to achieve those goals (Egley & Jones, 2005; Mangin, 2007;
Towns et al., 2001). These principals seem to have unlimited energy, political savvy, and
courage to be creative. They visit classrooms on a daily basis, tend to know every student in
their school by name, and have a great understanding of their students’ home lives through
daily news, student report letters and calls home. Some principals even teach classes. Finally,
principals in high-achieving low-SES schools believe that every student can learn, that they
can succeed, and that the students will meet whatever level of standard set for them (Erbe &
Holloway, 2000; Towns et al., 2001; Uchiyama & Wolf, 2002).
In summary, a strong principal-leader is needed to plan and implement the changes to
improve school performance. In any school, a principal must have effective leadership traits
and skills, such as the ability to cultivate trust with the teachers to facilitate collaboration, the
values that will drive the principal’s decisions and actions toward the desired results, and
communication skills to effectively communicate with teachers, parents, students, and the
community a vision of what must be accomplished to effectively educate children.
Evidence is clear (Johnston, 2002; Murphy, Elliot, Goldring, & Porter, 2007; Taik,
2010) that affecting and sustaining improvement in low-SES urban schools seems to require
more coordinated effort, above and beyond what is typically needed to improve an affluent
suburban school. The purpose of our study was to discover what leaders in low-SES, highperforming
schools are doing to raise achievement scores. In addition to searching the extant
scholarship on leadership behaviors of high-performing principals, we sought answers in four
areas: the behaviors that seemed to contribute to successful principals in high-achieving low-
SES schools, their decision making practices, their interactions, and the educational beliefs
and values they held. To answer our guiding questions, we used primarily a qualitative
strategy to collect and analyze data with quantitative methods playing a secondary, supportive
role.
METHODS
Referred to as naturalistic research or inquiry (Taylor, 1977), qualitative research is
primarily concerned with non-statistical methods of inquiry and analysis of social phenomena