Journal of School Leadership

Due to the growth of school choice across the United States as well as declining enrollment in some districts, schools are experiencing increasing competition for students. As a result, principals and school district leaders in high-choice districts are now expected to develop strategies such as branding, marketing, and community outreach to attract and retain students. Yet, there is a lack of literature exploring whether principals and district leaders are prepared to navigate these competitive spaces effectively, ethically, and equitably. Our study examines how principals and district leaders experience competition as well as their perspectives and practices in terms of marketing their school. In order to understand this complex process, we juxtapose theoretical perspectives on family and community partnerships with more mainstream market theories and critiques. We then apply these frameworks on three unique cases along the Texas–Mexico border, a low-income area of New York City, and rural Pennsylvania. Data were collected primarily through interviews with principals, superintendents, and other district leaders. We find that in all three cases, principals and district leaders felt they had to engage in marketing practices. Yet, some principals clearly embraced market-based rhetoric while others viewed strong community engagement as a means for maintaining enrollment. The three cases also reveal critical equity issues regarding principal experience, district support, and preexisting market hierarchies. We conclude with a discussion considering how districts can create equitable conditions for marketing and how leadership preparation programs can prepare principals and school leaders to work ethically and effectively in competitive spaces.

Teacher–student relationships (TSRs) have important implications for building trust, motivation, and engagement and improving both behavior and academic achievement. What about students’ relationships with principals? Given the scarcity of literature on the PSR, research on the TSR was used to buttress the findings from this empirical study of the PSR to describe more nuanced implications and deeper understandings of the influence and impact principals have on students and vice versa. This work resulted in a two-part series. Part I, included in this issue, focuses heavily on the literature review and detailed findings of the study. Part II, included in a forthcoming issue, embeds the study results more firmly within theoretical underpinnings and extends them toward establishing a new conceptual framework for the PSR and a new dimension of scholarship on effective school leadership. Qualitative narrative inquiry was chosen as the methodological approach. Interviews with four principals and three of their former students along with observations of each principal provided the data set. Findings from Part I, reveal nine dominant themes indicating that the PSR is a primary consideration for many principals not only for the personal satisfaction of interacting with students but also because of the belief that the relationships significantly contribute to principals’ ability to effectively meet their many responsibilities. Part I findings, which expose some of the challenges and complications in developing healthy PSRs, were then integrated with the synthesis of the existing literature in order to briefly propose a new framework for exploring the phenomenon.

The majority of the scholarly work on school leadership over the past several decades has centered on issues of academic press, while matters involving the social development and support of students have received far less attention. We know that improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for building trust, increasing motivation and engagement, and improving both behavior and academic achievement, and we know that principals have the second most significant effect on students. So, what about principals' relationships with students? Given a lack of research specifically concerning the principal-student relationship (PSR), this article addresses that gap. The authors conducted a qualitative narrative inquiry of the PSR in order to describe more nuanced implications and deeper understandings of the influence and impact of the phenomenon. This work resulted in a two-part series. Part I, included in a prior issue, focused heavily on the literature review and detailed findings of the study. Part II, included in this issue, embeds the study results more firmly within theoretical underpinnings and extends them toward establishing a new conceptual framework for the PSR and a new dimension of scholarship on effective school leadership. This framework consists of 16 dimensions of the PSR grouped into four categories: Principal Characteristics, Building the PSR, Meaning and Purpose, and Challenges. A short discussion including implications, limitations, and directions for future research is also included.