Numerous systematic reviews and studies have focused on the influence principals have on school improvement, but most of these studies have ignored the inclusion of students with special education needs. Building on the international attention to inclusion sparked by the 1994 Salamanca Statement, we have conducted a comprehensive review of empirical studies on principal leadership for inclusive schools published between 1995 and January 2024. Our search has yielded 38 studies across 13 countries. We have identified three areas of practice: (a) creating and sustaining a shared commitment to inclusion; (b) establishing and improving inclusive organizational conditions; and (c) building instructional and leadership capacity for inclusion. We have also identified 15 targeted practices. While most studies were focused within the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, common practices and challenges are apparent in all parts of the world. We conclude with recommendations for future research, policy, and practice.

In the field of educational leadership, qualitative case studies offer important insights into leadership practices and experiences within a unique context or set of contexts. Yet, not all qualitative case studies are well designed, and not all doctoral students are provided rich opportunities to engage in, learn from, and grow throughout participation in the research process. The purpose of this article is to provide guidance for doctoral students interested in conducting a qualitative case study for their dissertation.

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how the interaction of social justice leadership and instructional leadership types might influence collective teacher culture and student achievement in the Turkish education context. Methods: This research employs a quantitative approach, utilizing a dataset comprising at least 4,318 students and 313 teachers, nested within 40 schools. We performed a quadrant analysis to determine the interaction between instructional and social justice leadership types across schools. We also applied Bayesian multilevel structural equation modeling and Markov chain Monte Carlo bootstrapping analysis to estimate whether social justice leadership moderates the relationship between instructional leadership and student achievement, with collective teacher culture serving as a mediator across schools. Results: The quadrant analysis of principals' two-dimensional relationship between instructional and social justice leadership revealed that schools were distributed across four quadrants, labeled as "socializing," "competitive," "limiting," and "integrating." Additionally, while there was no direct relationship between instructional leadership and student achievement, this relationship became significant when moderated by social justice leadership. Finally, the indirect impact of instructional leadership on student achievement, mediated by collective teacher culture, was larger in schools with stronger social justice leadership. Implications: The impact of instructional leadership on student learning can be enhanced by integrating social justice leadership with instructional leadership practices. This integration can benefit students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, beyond the individual effect of each leadership type. Therefore, principal preparation, training, and evaluation programs should support aspiring and current principals in simultaneously utilizing and integrating leadership into daily practice.

More than 70 years ago, Milton Friedman argued in favor of vouchers as a policy tool to increase the quality of the nation’s education system. Since then, economists and other education policy researchers have studied several waves of taxpayer-funded private school voucher policies that have emerged. Too often, these researchers have ignored the policy history of vouchers or adequately described market theories and assumptions of competitive markets as they evaluated the impact of voucher programs on student outcomes. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review and analysis of state-legislated voucher policies in the United States from 1869 to 2024, which includes a policy scan of historical and contemporary voucher legislation and the extent to which vouchers successfully established education marketplaces that produced efficient and valued educational outcomes. We found little evidence that private school vouchers created markets that produced valued educational outcomes. In many cases, policymakers used vouchers as a tool to maintain racial segregation or the programs failed to increase student achievement outcomes. We detail how these failures underscore how education markets do not meet basic assumptions of competitive markets. This article concludes with recommendations for education policy researchers and next generation research related to private school vouchers.

Superintendents play a vital role in the districts and communities they serve, which is especially true in many rural contexts that function not only as a site for PreK–12 education but also as a community hub for a range of supports and services. Instability in the role can be threatening to district improvement, but research on the topic has been limited and too often focused exclusively on large districts and relying only on large longitudinal datasets. Our explanatory, sequential mixed methods study begins with an examination of demographics and turnover trends across 600 rural Texas school districts to investigate the realities of turnover in Texas rural superintendency. However, we also identified and interviewed a sample of rural superintendents we classified as “leavers” or stayers” to examine how unique personal factors influence decisions to stay or go. Findings illuminate the multifaceted and idiosyncratic factors that contribute to rural superintendent turnover with implications for policy and leadership preparation and development.

The purpose of this single case study was to explore how a group of public school principals and assistant principals in Texas, a Southern state in the United States, define and describe social justice in education, as well as leadership practices and challenges they associate with social justice leadership. We draw upon theories of justice from Rawls (1999), Fraser (1999), and Gewirtz and Cribb (2002) to examine school leaders' perceptions of social justice in education. Through data analysis, definitions of social justice in education are categorized as follows: simplistic, critical, and contextually responsive. Central leadership practices identified are: self-reflexivity, capacity building, and developing a culture of care. Lastly, challenges school leaders described as related to social justice leadership were connected to district operations, resource allocation, school-community attitudes, and time. Findings highlight the important role of school community context in how social justice is advanced in schools. Findings have implications for research and educational leadership development to support school leaders in the use of social justice leadership practices in diverse contexts.

Work-related stress and well-being in school leaders is an increasing concern in education. This paper explores how stress accumulates in a principal’s practice over time, challenging the assumption that stress is static or uniformly experienced. We conducted a single-case, mixed-methods study and collected quantitative data on sleep quality, mental health, health behaviors, and leadership self-efficacy along with qualitative data from four semi-structured interviews and two observations with a single principal. Our findings show that while work-stress was manageable, and even positive at times, increasing workload and systemic challenges led to an accumulation of stress that negatively affected Mary’s overall health and leadership self-efficacy. Her appraisal of work-stress was influenced by factors such as control, agency, complexity of the stressor, and alignment with job expectations. We recommend that principal preparation programs include education on stress management, health, and leadership sustainability, and we call attention to school districts and their role in supporting principals under increasingly complex and uncertain conditions.

In this special issue, we asked contributing authors to identify complex and intersectional equity concerns in special education and to tie those concerns to leadership and to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Our goal was to create teaching cases that could empower aspiring and current leaders with the knowledge and skills necessary to support and promote social change and justice for students with disabilities at their intersections. Each case situates the enactment of the IDEA within a local context, allowing readers to understand how the interaction between leadership, IDEA, and intersectional equity concerns relate. Throughout the special issue, we encourage readers to move beyond compliance with IDEA, to engage with intersectional and expansive equity approaches, and to address both ableism and racism.

A recent study published in Educational Researcher by White (2023) examined superintendent gender gaps. This work required 4 years of internet searches to identify and match superintendent names with each of the roughly 13,000 school districts in the United States. Although this study provided important insights into the superintendent gender gaps, the study is unable to examine gaps for females of color or the long-term career pathways of superintendents. The lack of a national longitudinal superintendent dataset has meant researchers and policymakers have limited insights into superintendent racial and gender gaps, turnover rates, experience, and career pathways to the superintendency. Drawing on data from the Texas State Longitudinal Data System, we offer several findings to provide a glimpse of what could be accomplished with a longitudinal dataset. Policymakers, school boards, search firms, and communities will fail to understand the full range of challenges and opportunities to diversifying and strengthening the superintendent workforce until such a dataset exists and is accessible to researchers and other interested parties.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to highlight the impacts of psychological and biological health on the principalship, particularly as it relates to sleep. Job-related stress, heavy workloads, and unpredictable work schedules can impact principals’ mental health, diet, and consumptive behaviors, which can disrupt the much-needed restorative sleep for healthy cognition, physiological functioning, and efficacious leadership. We turn the field's attention towards the importance of quality sleep and how it impacts personal health and occupational performance. We provide a robust interdisciplinary review of literature on precursors and outcomes of poor sleep quality as it pertains to school leaders both personally and professionally. Empirical recommendations for improving sleep quality along with recommendations for preparation programs and the field of educational leadership are discussed.

Principals are critical for school improvement, but work-related stress threatens leadership sustainability. While stress is increasingly examined among principals, the impacts on indicators of health such as anxiety, depression, and sleep are under-explored. In other fields, these factors are implicated in long-term health effects and negative occupational outcomes. This mixed-methods study explores principals' overall health, sleep quality using actigraphy watches, and perceptions of leadership self-efficacy in eight principals. Findings show principals struggled with health issues and disrupted sleep patterns which affected their leadership self-efficacy and intentions to stay in their professions. Recommendations for practice, policy, and future directions are included.

The superintendent is one of the most important positions within public school districts because they have the capacity to influence policies, practices, and perceptions among school staff while simultaneously holding sway over the public. Yet, few Latinx administrators are hired into the superintendency - even fewer are Latinas. Consequently, districts are never gaining access to talented leaders that can help foster improved educational experiences and outcomes for all students. In this essay, we briefly outline the important role of the superintendent. Then, we provide a set of unique insights on the racial and gender demographics of Texas superintendents as well as how Latinas move through the educator workforce from principal to superintendent. We conclude with implications to further diversify the superintendency and ensure Latinas are effectively mentored, supported, and hired into district leadership positions.

This case highlights the moral and ethical dilemmas that principals and educators confront when making decisions about special education classification and placement, particularly in the context of racial disproportionality. These decisions are complex, influenced by the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the sociocultural and historical contexts that school leaders work within. In addition, the case delves into the relationship between general education instruction and special education referral processes in the context of a multi-tiered system of supports, exploring the delicate balance principals must maintain between adhering to special education laws and exercising professional judgment.

In states that fund public prekindergarten and kindergarten in elementary schools, principals are central to ensuring these programs support children’s learning and development. Yet few studies explore how principals position these programs within their instructional leadership and what they perceive should be done by district leaders to support their efforts to lead these programs. This case study investigated these issues with a sample of elementary school principals (N = 14) working in Texas. Using a modified conceptual lens that categorizes four essential dimensions of instructional leadership for prekindergarten and kindergarten, we found that principals possessed insight into many of these leadership practices but often did not enact these visions due to the academic performance pressures of the upper grades. Furthermore, principals wanted additional support from their district and state administrators to lead their prekindergarten and kindergarten programs better. Such findings illuminate several opportunities to strengthen principals’ instructional leadership of prekindergarten and kindergarten.

Schools of choice need to provide equitable access and opportunities to all students, including students with disabilities and emergent bilinguals. In the context of Early College High Schools, principals and school districts should be partners in ensuring admissions processes are non-discriminatory. In this fictional case, a new principal in a high-performing early college high school becomes concerned that the school has been denying or not actively recruiting students with disabilities and emergent bilingual students. However, when she raises her concern with her supervisors and predecessor, she gets no support. The teaching notes of this case review the literature on ethical leadership, school administration dilemmas, and bounded ethicality.

Elementary school principals play a key role in leading school personnel to provide prekindergartners and kindergartners with the support needed to ensure their short- and long-term school success. Yet, few studies examine how principals conceptualize what it means for children to be ready for school and how principals support students as they progress through school. In this case study, we examine how a sample of elementary school principals in Texas (N = 14) conceptualized school readiness and their role in supporting prekindergarten and/or kindergarten students' progress through school. We found these principals framed school readiness as a moment at school entry from which they, as instructional leaders, sought to build early learning experiences with their teachers to support students' success. We use such findings to consider how to expand and support principals' understandings of school readiness beyond the deficit-based neoliberal logic that prioritizes children thriving in a competitive learning landscape.