| Current research indicates that the expanding role of principals continues to be one of the most critical elements of successful public schools (Waters, Marzano, McNulty, 2003). This study seeks to advance and elaborate on the role of the principalship in general and seeks to identify behaviors of principals in schools that have been recognized by the California Department of Education by being awarded both the Title I Achieving Schools Award and California Distinguished Schools Award for the school year 2003--2004.; The 11 principals interviewed received the California Distinguished Schools Award and the Title I Achieving Schools Award in the school year 2003--2004 and were principals for at least two years prior to receiving the awards. Additionally, each of the schools had a student population that included at least 25 percent English language learners and at least 50 percent identified as socio-economically disadvantaged.; Participants in this study were asked about the development and implementation of a vision for their school, the characteristics of the school that led to success, and their views on organizational change and transformation. This study used both in-depth interviews and narrative inquiry as the main methods of gathering data. The results yielded the 10 following behaviors with the greatest frequency: Earn the trust and respect of your staff, connect with your students, hire quality people (keep them current, energized, and committed), leverage the management of your schools to further your instructional leadership, develop a culture of excellence, collaborate with all stakeholders, understand and embrace the complexity of change, focus on your vision, face the facts: use the data, set short-term goals, and celebrate successes.; Recommendations from the study include: (1) Reevaluating the administrator credential program to make the curriculum more applicable to the principalship. (2) Increase the rigor of the tier II credential program and develop a more useful renewal process for the administrative credential. (3) Districts to adopt training and support programs for new and current administrators. (4) Further research to be conducted on the effective use of time. |
