The impact of principal leadership styles on school accountability

This study examined the impact of principals¿ leadership styles on the academic achievement of students as measured by the Mississippi Curriculum Test, Second Edition (MCT2). The 2013-2014 school year MCT2 mathematics and language arts scores were used as measures of student achievement and high-stakes testing. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ5x) was distributed to 420 principals. However, because of incomplete information given by the principals on the questionnaire, and the fact that the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) did not report MCT2 scores for particular schools, some of the principals¿ information was not useful; thus leaving the researcher with a sample size of n = 110 participants. This study was guided by 2 research questions. Relationships were analyzed using the Multivariate test for Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) in which the variable of socioeconomic status was used as a covariate because it was found to result statistically different scores across group means. The research questions sought to determine what type of principal leadership style resulted in higher student achievement in mathematics and language arts.