The purposes of this research study were to identify the instructional leadership practices and beliefs of superintendents of high-performing, high-poverty districts, and develop a profile of an effective superintendent in these school districts. School districts were identified from data compiled by the Education Trust West, which identified high-performing, and high-poverty schools in California. Data were gathered through interviews of eleven individuals in three different school districts. In addition to the interviews, the respondents shared documents and internal communication tools, which the researcher reviewed. Qualitative research software (ATLAS/ti) was utilized to analyze the data from the interviews. The results indicate that the superintendents: (a) focused the entire school district on student achievement; (b) expected alignment between district and school goals; (c) utilized a variety of ways to communicate their messages to various constituencies; (d) faced conflict as a major part of their jobs, ranging from conflict with the school board to conflict with the teachers' association; (e) were perceived as strong instructional leaders; (f) placed a high priority on professional development for administrators and teachers; (g) expected schools to depend primarily on categorical and grant funds to provide supplemental services to students, but made staff resources available to support high student achievement; (h) relied heavily on data to inform their decisions; and (i) held administrators accountable for high student achievement. The researcher concluded that an effective superintendent in high-performing, high-poverty school districts can be characterized as one who (a) is relentlessly focused on high student achievement; (b) communicates constantly with all groups within and outside of the school community; (c) is able to withstand conflict and remain focused on student achievement; (d) provides the resources necessary for student achievement in terms of staff support, and professional development; (e) uses data to inform the decision-making process; and (f) holds people accountable for high student achievement, while providing them with the flexibility to achieve their goals in a way they deem appropriate to their particular circumstances.

This bounded collective case study is an exploration of five school districts that have come under California state receivership and have received comprehensive assessments from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. It is detailed from the point of receivership through the initial comprehensive assessment report. Each case is situated within the timeframe in which each district had their budgets negatively certified, their request for a state loan granted, their receivership by the state declared and the initial steps toward recovery identified. The five California school districts chosen for this study are a sample of the population of school districts that have requested loans from the state of California since 1984. Of this population of thirty-two, seven have come under state receivership. Of these seven, five school districts have had comprehensive assessments mandated by the state of California and conducted by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. These five school districts selected as the sample for this study are: Compton Unified School District, West Contra Costa Unified School District, West Fresno Elementary School District, Oakland Unified School District and Vallejo City Unified School District. This study utilized the results from three data sets: district profiles which included demographic and financial data; the comprehensive assessment of the five selected school districts conducted by the FCMAT in the financial management area; and practitioner interviews at the district, county and state levels. The findings provide a roadmap for school districts in determining its risk of insolvency. The common demographic, financial conditions and fiscal practices are identified and how these conditions and practices lead to fiscal insolvency is presented. These conditions and practices have been organized into a high risk model that provides a hierarchy of predictors divided into primary, secondary, and independent risk areas that describe how these conditions and practices can be utilized as indicators of impending fiscal crisis. The systemic impact on fiscal solvency in the areas of; governance, human resources, facilities, and most importantly student achievement needs to receive further research.

The 13,000 school districts in the United States are important institutional sites where consequential educational policy decisions – from school zoning to local funding initiatives– are contested and implemented. Despite their importance as institutions, there is very little quantitative research on school district leadership and governance. We do not currently know if the identity of school district leaders has any effect on the academic performance of school districts, or if school district leaders from different backgrounds tend to advance different educational policies for their districts. In this dissertation, I leverage new longitudinal datasets on superintendent and school board tenures, matched to data on district-level achievement and policy variation, to examine how school district leadership may matter for students’ educational experiences. This dissertation consists of three empirical papers that examine different aspects of school district leadership and governance. Chapter 1 uses a novel dataset of superintendent employment histories in 26 states, matched to student achievement data, to estimate variation in superintendent effectiveness. I use data on superintendents who move between multiple school districts as an estimation strategy to separate superintendent effects from other district-level factors that affect student achievement. To estimate superintendent effectiveness, I adapt value-added modeling strategies from the principal and teacher effects literature, and use simulation analyses to further justify my modeling approaches. Across model specifications, I find that the standard deviation of superintendent effects ranges from 0.03-0.10 SD on student achievement. These are moderate effect sizes, and indicate the importance of studying school district leadership as a factor that can have important implications for student-level outcomes. Chapter 2 examines the superintendent appointment process using mixed methods data from California and Florida over the past decade from 2009-2019. Given that superintendents serve important political functions within school districts, I examine whether school board members tend to appoint superintendents who share their own partisan political affiliations. During this period, I do not find any evidence that school boards prefer to hire co-partisan superintendents. Instead, school boards prioritize superintendent candidates who show strong social-emotional intelligence, and who demonstrate the capacity to develop relationships with a broad range of community stakeholders. I conclude the chapter by examining how these results may be shifting in light of an emergent conservative movement to polarize school board politics. Chapter 3 examines whether the partisan political characteristics of school districts affects the likelihood that school districts hold tax and bond elections, or vote to approve these local educational funding increases, conditional on elections being held. It also uses data from California and Florida over the past decade from 2009-2019. With appropriate statistical controls, I find no evidence that school board or voter partisanship affects the probability of districts holding or passing tax or bond measures. Taken together, the three papers make important contributions to our understanding of how school districts function as organizations, and how the attributes of school district leaders shape students’ educational environments.

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The purpose of this study was to obtain baseline data on the implementation of counseling for parents of handicapped children in selected school divisions in Virginia. The 135 school divisions in Virginia were ranked by size of special education population as of the child count of December 1982. Thirty of the school divisions were selected as the sample by systematic random sampling procedures. Two survey instruments were designed: one for school division superintendents and one for parents of handicapped students. Each of the 30 school division superintendents was sent one questionnaire. Eight, twelve, or sixteen parent questionnaires were sent to each of the 30 school divisions. The number depended on the size of the special education population in the school division. Half of the parent questionnaires were sent to the superintendent and half to the chairperson of the local Special Education Advisory Committee for distribution to parents of their choosing. There were 356 parent questionnaires in all. There was a 42% superintendent response and a 24% parent response. Interviews were conducted with five of the seven school divisions which had responded that parent counseling was an integral part of the regular school program for handicapped children. The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, validated both the definition of parent counseling used in the research and the reasonableness and importance of the study findings. Results of the research indicated that none of the school divisions which participated in the study provided parent counseling as an integral part of the regular school program for handicapped students; that provision of parent counseling depended upon individuals in the school system who perceived a need and made the effort to implement parent counseling; that during the course of this study there was a decrease in parent counseling services in some of the school divisions and no increase in parent counseling in any of the school divisions; and, that parent counseling has not appeared in state plans and has not been monitored by federal or state departments of education. / Ed. D.

After a century of reform efforts, urban school districts have not demonstrated political, managerial, or technical skills for systemic and sustainable organizational transformation. This study proposes that this cycle of reform failure generates from a theoretical misunderstanding of education organizations as mechanical systems, where failure points can be identified and replaced with corrective action in a controlled environment. This study begins with the theoretical understanding of educational organizations as complex adaptive systems with broad and deep internal and external connections that may or may not be readily visible. This requires a reform approach that anticipates and takes advantage of the flexibility and agile responsiveness seen in sustainable complex systems across many diverse disciplines (neuroscience, biology, ecology, technology, social sciences). This study examines historical and current reform efforts within the current context of legal, legislative and policy environment of a typical urban district (Los Angeles Unified School District.), and proposes an alternative program design for district transformation based on complexity theory.

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of educational inequalities existing in the West Independent School District and the eight surrounding rural school districts, and to suggest changes that might improve educational opportunities for all children involved.

The problem in this study is to determine and evaluate the practices of twelve small town schools in Navarro County in giving information about the schools to the people of the communities through the newspapers of the county.