Program Evaluation of a School Leadership Program in an Elementary School

The purpose of this program was to analyze the effects of The Leader in Me/seven habits philosophy on the selected elementary school in western North Carolina. The perceived problem was that in this particular school there was a need for methods to encourage student participation and student motivation and to increase homework completion and classroom focus.;The lack of these pieces within the school resulted in students who were unmotivated to learn, failed to follow discipline instructions, used inappropriate language with peers, and did not complete homework. The Leader in Me program referred to throughout this study was developed by the FranklinCovey Corporation.;The setting for this project was an elementary school located in a rural county in western North Carolina, referred to as System X and School X. School X implemented The Leader in Me program and received in-depth training which concentrated on changing a culture and teaching leadership skills to young people. The identified school was chosen because the researcher was an administrator at the site and had access and working knowledge of the implementation of the program. Staff members and students were asked to respond to a five-point Likert survey. Responses from a state-generated Working Conditions Survey were reviewed and compared. Focus-group interviews of teachers were conducted by an appointed proxy. All questions were linked to the seven habits and the implementation.;The study's methodology included survey responses, focus-group discussions, and test data. During the data collection process, the researcher categorized key words and concepts into general themes that were correlated to the key elements of The Leader in Me program and the seven habits. These themes were charted to indicate the level of implementation and the success of the implementation of The Leader in Me program.;The findings substantiated that The Leader in Me program met with different degrees of success in various areas.