With increasing emphasis on accountability measures—specifically student achievement on standardized tests—and a renewed focus on middle grades education, middle schools in the United States face many challenges. This field study explored how principals in five, grades six-through-eight New York City public middle schools met the challenge of balancing the needs of middle school students with the increased demands for improvement in student performance on standardized tests in an accountability environment where principals are rewarded for higher test scores. Although there is an extensive body of research on the effectiveness of the middle school concept, and literature on the conflict between the middle school concept and test-based accountability reform, few studies have documented how middle school principals are balancing these demands in ways that lead their schools to success. This study addressed that gap.

The theories of adaptive (Heifetz) and outside-the-box (Sparks, 2007) leadership provided the framework used to analyze principals' decision-making and practice.

In order to better understand how principals respond to these influences, a qualitative case-based approach was used. The specific schools were identified based on: success on New York City's school report card system; meeting NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress requirements; and implementation of a Turning Points-based middle school model. Five schools were chosen in order to demonstrate a range of practices. Principals were interviewed, schools were observed, and documents were reviewed.

This study revealed that the participating principals are in agreement about the necessary qualities of a middle school and are implementing elements of the middle school concept. Findings also suggested that test-based accountability does affect principals' implementation of the middle school concept, specifically by “narrowing” the curriculum (www.cep-dc.org) for all students but more significantly for those lowest performing, and by driving schools' need for homogeneous grouping and tracking practices. For some participants, the findings also uncovered a loss of collaboration and parent involvement as a result of the emphasis on test-based accountability. Finally, the study demonstrated principals' varied use of strategies of adaptive and outside-the-box leadership through ongoing reflection, maintaining perspective and clarity of vision and purpose, and exhibition of high levels of emotional intelligence.