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Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (196 pp., $27.95 pb, ISBN: 1^166-0227-5).
School Leadership that Works; From Research to Results is the latest in a series of books that started with the highly successful, Instruction That Works. The book's intent is to combine rigorous research with practical advice in the examination of school leadership and academic achievement. The heart of the book is the identification of 21 categories of behaviors that the authors refer to as "responsibilities" of school leaders. Authors Marzano, Waters, and McNulty conducted a meta-analysis of 69 leadership studies that investigate the relationship between a school's principal leader and student achievement, spanning from 1978 to 2001. There is a small but growing body of literature on the importance of the principal's role in gifted and talented programs, and this book incorporates the findings and conclusions of this literature. For example, in Grantham and Ford's study of principal leadership and underrepresentation of Black students in gifted programs (Grantham & Ford, 1998), the authors found that teacher supervision and evaluation, staff development, and quality control, were essential leadership traits in remedying the problems of underrepresentation. Each of these is manifested in the 21 responsibilities.
The authors provide descriptions of each of the 21 categories of leadership, or...