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High school principals' perceived leadership practices and their relationship to student performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS): a cohort study

The purpose of this study was to determine how leadership practices impact
student performance as perceived by principals and selected site-based decision
making (SBDM) committee members of high schools in Region V Education Service
Center (ESC), Texas. The study is one of four studies which examined perceived
leadership practices of principals in the public school system in Southeast Texas. The
other studies in this cohort focused on elementary principals, middle school principals
and superintendents. This study compared the perceptions of high school principals
and selected SBDM committee members regarding leadership practices and
determined if selected demographic variables had an impact on the perceived
leadership practices of the two identified groups.
The investigation procedures for this study involved an analysis of the responses
from principals and site-based decision making committee members to the Leadership
Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (2003) which evaluates the use of five identified leadership practices. Student performance
information for the 29 participating high school campuses was obtained from the
Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System.
Findings indicate no linear relationship exists between perceived leadership
practices of high school principals and the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and
Skills (TAKS) performance. Further analysis revealed no statistical significance in
the correlation of student academic success as measured by TAKS and the five
leadership practices identified by Kouzes and Posner(2002); Inspire a Shared Vision,
Model the Way, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the
Heart.
The data indicated that Region V high school principals embrace the leadership
practices identified by Kouzes and Posner at least moderately (between the 30th and
69th percentile) and in some cases at a higher level (70th percentile or above). Also,
the data revealed that, as a group, the high school principals rated themselves higher
overall regarding perceived leadership in comparison to their observers.
Further analysis of the data showed that the demographic variables of gender and
ethnicity did not have an effect on survey responses of the study participants. After
examining the differences between the LPI responses of principals and their observers
regarding age and years of experience, it was evident that such demographic variables
did not impact survey responses.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/5840
Date17 September 2007
CreatorsSoileau, Christopher Benton
ContributorsHoyle, John R
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Record of Study, text
Format4333271 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital

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