A Longitudinal Study of Principals' Activities and Student Performance

With the movement toward increased accountability for student performance at the school level, there has been a simultaneous movement toward increased emphasis on the responsibility of school principals to improving teaching and learning (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Murphy, 2002; Stein & Spillane, 2003). Although a substantial amount of research on school leadership has focused on what principals’ do, little of this research has explored how principals’ activities may relate to and possibly affect student performance. This paper presents results from a three-year longitudinal study of principal activities and student performance. A three level HLM growth model (test scores nested within students, and students nested within schools) was employed to determine the degree to which principals’ activities were associated with student performance at baseline, and changes in student performance over time. This approach allows us to see how (1) specific principal activities are more or less prevalent in high or low-performing schools, and (2) whether changes in the amount of time a principal spends on each activity is associated with changes in student performance.

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