Principals’ Sensemaking of Leading Under Accountability And Innovation Policies

ABSTRACT

U.S. federal policies No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top resulted in a policy overlap that created unique challenges and opportunities for administrators. This study examined principals’ perceptions of an overlapping accountability-innovation policy context and their sense of how the policies affected their role as leaders. Primary data for our comparative case studies included ten interviews with public high school principals. Results indicate principals perceived contradictions across policies. To implement policies, principals reported taking on new roles associated with articulating traditional and non-traditional learning targets, innovating schools, marketing, integrating technology into administrative practices, and grant seeking and management.

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the contributions of administrators who participated in this study. We are also thankful for the helpful comments of Ann Allen, Jan Nespor, and Scott Sweetland on this research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.