Notions of “Success” in Southern Arizona Schools: Principal Leadership in Changing Demographic and Border Contexts

Abstract

This article examines how Southern Arizona principals conceptualize and enact successful leadership in border schools with shifting demographics and high percentages of colonized populations. Beyond global neoliberal and neoconservative pressures for accountability and standardized curricula, Arizona principals must also navigate immigration and language legislation. Our qualitative study follows the International Study of Successful School Leadership (ISSPP) in case study design and data collection protocols. Findings indicate that, along with Leithwood and Riehl's leadership dimensions, all four principals demonstrate a sociocultural affect as part of successful practice in Arizona border contexts.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Margaret Grogan, Jerry Starratt, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. Arizona Proposition 203 (2000) also mandates the use of Structured English Immersion (SEI), an intensive one-year transitional language program, for every Arizona public school child not fluent in English. After one year of the intensive language instruction, most ELLs must be “transferred to English-language mainstream classrooms” (Arizona Revised Statutes [A.R.S.] 15–752). Further, Proposition 203 exempts no child (regardless of his or her English language proficiency) from annual standardized state testing in English. Administrators who fail to implement SEI in their schools are sanctioned.

2. The State of Arizona legislature authorized charter schools in 1994, placing Arizona among the first states in the U.S. to adopt such laws (Holyoke, Henig, Brown, & Lacireno-Pacquet, 2009). Currently, slightly over 500 charter schools exist in the state, which accounts for 25% of the state's public schools and 10% of all public school students—the highest proportion in the U.S. (Arizona Charter Schools Association, 2010; Arizona Department of Education, 2010). Further, Arizona also does not cap the number of virtual schools, which number in the mid-30s (Arizona Department of Education, 2010).