Three purposes are generally acknowledged as the constituting values for public school education. One purpose is aesthetic, becoming all that you can be, and the classic liberal notions of what it is to be a well-rounded educated person. A second purpose of education is economic, learning to earn, acquiring the skills and knowledge to be a contributing member of society. The third purpose is ideological, encompassing both the socialization of learners as citizens and the perpetuation of a society's cultural norms and values (Hodgkinson, 1991). Given the title of this paper, one might naturally conclude that this article would focus on the contribution of school leaders to the ideological purposes of education --specifically, how to inculcate and promote democracy as a fundamental social value and an ethical guide to proper citizenship. As much as this may be an important dimension of the educational enterprise, our approach to discussing the theme of democracy and leadership is different. Rather than focusing on democracy as simply a social ethic to be championed by school leaders for normative or trans- rational reasons, we also make the case for democratic leadership processes in schools for rationalized professional reasons. Democratic leadership processes are desirable for schools because they reflect socially mandated ethical commitments to collective process. However, they are relevant in other ways. They can be professionally justified as the necessary, as much as appropriate, approach to leading schools effectively in our increasingly culturally diverse communities and a world transformed by the effects of technology and the forces of globalization. Our rational professional justifications for democratic leadership in schools are grounded in the nature of the school leadership role, the social contexts of our communities, as well as an ideological social mandate. To that end we present conceptual perspectives grounded in valuation processes that capture the full range of human action as well as show the relationship between social ethics and rationally based valuation processes. We make of use of a body of existing theory and research to illustrate that rational processes prevail as the primary influences on decision making by educational leaders.