| This dissertation is a study of the interplay between accountability and leadership in the work of two urban elementary school principals working in a high-stakes, standards-based, performance accountability environment (Boston, Massachusetts). The study examined how principals interpreted external accountability demands for the improvement of teaching and learning and how their leadership practices influenced their schools' responses to those accountability demands.;The increasing alignment of accountability policies across levels of the educational system and more targeted attention to student achievement have served to focus these principals' attention to issues of improving teaching and learning. However, gaps persist between the intent of state and district accountability policies, particularly, and the way that people working in these schools interpret and respond to the accountability demands embedded in the policies.;Some lack of clarity regarding what local schools and their leaders are accountable for contributes to such gaps. More importantly, the district's adoption of a developmental approach to accountability---i.e., something schools and their staffs are supposed to get better at as their instructional and organizational capacity develops---has allowed principals to peg their enacted accountability responses variously, based on their personal sense of accountability, their own leadership role conceptions and capabilities, and their assessments about available capacity in their schools. Although the two schools in this study faced comparable external demands, their accountability responses demonstrated considerable variation.;This study confirms research suggesting that, in lower performing schools where capacity and motivation for improvement may be low, the principal plays a pivotal role in crafting the school's response to performance accountability demands. The success of such a school's accountability response relies on the principal's leadership ability to mobilize internal capacity to improve teaching and learning in effective, sustainable ways.;Findings from this research suggest that the district would benefit from redefining its accountability for the work of principals with more explicit and specified attention to student achievement as a driver of instructional decision-making and improvement efforts, as well as providing principals training and support to help them learn to better target, mobilize, and leverage instructional and organizational capacity in support of high-performance accountability. |
