Leaders for productive schools

This article reviews the literature on effective schools and school improvement to develop a portrait of leadership for schools in which all youngsters reach ambitious academic-performance targets, that is, a framework to describe leadership for productive schools is presented. The framework is divided into eight major dimensions: vision for learning, instructional program, curricular program, assessment program, communities of learning, resource allocation and use, organizational culture, and social advocacy. Each dimension, in turn, is comprised of three or four core functions. Functions, in turn, are defined by the specific behaviors that leaders employ to shepherd the school toward important organizational outcomes.