Purposeful community and its association with school letter grades

Abstract

Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) introduced the term “purposeful community” which focused on specific principal leadership skills positively tied to school letter grade. The purpose of this study was to find the degree to which the principal implemented the nine responsibilities necessary to establish a purposeful community in a school and the association with school letter grades as measured through Indiana’s A-F school designation. Each of the nine responsibilities were viewed in the context of their corresponding concept and National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) Program Recognition Standards (NPBEA, 2018). Indiana public high school principals were asked to complete a survey about their leadership practices and provide information about their school from the 2017-2018 school year, including the letter grade assigned by the state of Indiana. Three different regression analyses were conducted in this study. The minimal number of respondents to the survey inhibited the significance of the results however some themes emerged that are worthy of consideration. Across the various regression analyses conducted, six of the nine responsibilities were found to have positive effects on student achievement. Additionally, eight of the nine responsibilities showed some statistical significance (positive or negative) which are tied to three of four concepts and three NELP standards.