Effective school principals are urgently needed to lead reform efforts to close the achievement gap between high performing and low performing students, particularly in high poverty and low performing public schools. This study employed an embedded mixed methods design of qualitative and quantitative data, and an analytic process called paradigm (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to reveal the behaviors and practices of effective school principals in challenging public school contexts. The results of the study illuminated the behaviors and practices of effective school principals in challenging public school contexts. In addition, a grounded theory was developed of the phenomenon of sense-making of effective school principals that linked to systemic changes in the school. A substantive theory gave explanatory power to the success of principals to generate significant academic student achievement in high poverty, high needs schools.

The four schools and their principals were selected from an elite pool of schools in the state of Colorado that demonstrated high growth on the state’s academic Growth Model. The selected schools met the criteria of at least 50% of the students from poverty and minority populations, and school principals with three or more years of tenure in their schools.

The study revealed an alternative educational leadership model--Stewardship as a Sense-making Model of Leadership. The principal as a servant leader, the fundamental influence in the schools, created conditions for shared leadership and paradigmatic shifts in the instructional climate that positively impacted student academic achievement.