Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning: Executive Summary of Research Findings

Abstract

Educational leadership can have strong, positive, although indirect, effects on student learning. The full report of our study—Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning—provides evidence and analyses to substantiate this claim. As well, our study also unpacks how such leadership has these strong positive effects. Leaders in education—including state-level officials, superintendents and district staff, principals, school board members, teachers and community members enacting various leadership roles—provide direction for, and exercise influence over, policy and practice. Their contributions are crucial, our evidence shows, to initiatives aimed at improving student learning.