Abstract
Problem. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in managerial and visionary leadership of principals from high performing and low performing secondary schools in California, using the percentage of dropouts; actual attendance; and co-extra curricular participants as performance criteria. The following questions were addressed: (1) Are the visionary leadership scores of the principals from high performing secondary schools greater than those from low performing secondary schools? (2) Are the managerial leadership scores of the principals from high performing secondary schools greater than those from low performing secondary schools? (3) Is there a positive correlation between the visionary and managerial leadership scores of principals from high performing schools? (4) Is there a positive correlation between the visionary and managerial leadership scores of principals from low performing schools? Methods. The study used two self-report instruments to assess the visionary and managerial leadership of one hundred secondary school principals. These principals were from secondary schools in California meeting the study's high performing and low performing criteria. Eighty-two principals returned completed questionnaires. One parametric treatment (two-tailed t-test); and two non-parametric techniques (Spearman-Rho Rank; Mann Whitney U) were used to analyze data. Findings. This investigation found, in answer to questions one and two, that there was a significant difference in the scores of principals from high performing secondary schools and the principals from low performing secondary schools in both visionary and managerial leadership. In response to questions three and four, the study found a positive correlation between the visionary and managerial leadership scores of principals from both high performing and low performing schools. However, pertaining to question number four, the correlation between visionary leadership and managerial leadership of principals from low performing schools was too small to be useful. Conclusions. The study concluded that visionary leadership is an important factor in the behavior of principals from high performing schools. It also concluded that managerial leadership, while related to visionary leadership and minimally required, may not be as essential a factor as visionary leadership in the behavior of principals from high performing secondary schools.