Instructional leadership in Catholic elementary schools: An analysis of personal, organizational, and environmental correlates

This study addresses an oft-cited problem in American education--the inability of principals in a political environment to exercise instructional leadership. It frames that problem in terms of a larger problem in which it is embedded--the bureaucratic governance system of American schools. One solution to this nested problem, it argues, is to adopt the kinds of reforms practiced by private schools, organizations that are part of a private sector environment rather than a political environment and that devolve authority to the school and its principal.;The dependent variable is principal instructional leadership, as perceived by teachers, in 48 elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay area. Independent variables--correlates of instructional leadership--include personal, organizational, private sector environment, and institutional environment factors, as well as combinations of all four. The independent variable of primary interest is comprised of private sector environment factors--the extent to which a school is dependent on financial resources and insecure about client resources. The study makes use of open systems theories of organizations, drawing primarily from resource dependence theory and institutionalist theory.;Two instruments are employed: (1) Principal Instructional Management Rating Scales (PIMRS), a 50-item survey developed to measure a principal's instructional leadership along ten subscales; (2) Catholic School Principal's Questionnaire (CSPQ), a survey developed for this research to gather a principal's responses to personal, organizational, and environmental factors related to instructional leadership. Response rates for both instruments were well above 80%. Both were thoroughly assessed for reliability and validity.;Data are analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics, ANOVA, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. Results of these procedures indicate that private sector environment correlates offer the most powerful explanation for the variance in perceived instructional leadership, followed by those organizational factors that are related to teachers and then by personal and institutional environment factors.;The study concludes that the explanatory power of the private sector environment is pertinent to public policymakers and reformers interested in school-based management and other proposals to "privatize" the public sector, as well as to Catholic school policymakers and practitioners.