Dr. Katina Stapleton
(202) 245-6566
Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov

The Education Leadership (Leadership) topic supports research on programs, policies, and practices to support leaders in K-12 education systems at the school, district, or state level in order to improve leadership in ways that can lead to beneficial student education outcomes.

Education leaders include district superintendents and administrators, school principals, and other personnel in leadership roles such as teacher-leaders, vice- and assistant principals, school boards, turn-around specialists, curriculum supervisors, talent management specialists, assessment directors, and principal supervisors. The Leadership topic recognizes the critical role these education leaders play in creating safe and supportive learning environments for students, improving the skills of their staffs, implementing policies and programs, managing systems efficiently, and leading organizational change. Education leaders are also seen as key to the successful implementation of improvements in education systems. The Institute is interested in research to better understand the roles of leaders in managing and improving systems and how their leadership capacity can be improved.

The long-term outcome of this research will be an array of leadership practices, programs (e.g., in-service principal training on conducting teacher observations and providing feedback), assessments, and policies (e.g., recruitment, retention, and principal evaluation) that have been demonstrated to be effective for improving and assessing leading and leaders in ways that are linked to improvement in student achievement.