Peabody College of Vanderbilt University and South China Normal University have worked for the past four years in a formal partnership arrangement to train and develop school principals throughout Guangzhou, China, a city of 18 million people. In summer of 2008, a key researcher from each university joined the International Successful School Principals Project (ISSPP) to conduct a more careful analysis of two high performing schools. These two schools were identified through the stringent criteria developed by South China Normal University and the Ministry of Education in Guangzhou and because they had received positive external and independent reports from the Ministry of Education in Beijing. The Chinese ministry of education uses “league tables” of test and examination results and the two school chosen had shown continued and sustained improvement over time using both local and national measures. This reports emphasized the high quality of the principals of these schools. In addition, both principals have been acknowledged by their professional peers as being “exemplary”. The two principals studied were from Guangdong Guangya Middle School and SIN Yuan High School. Following the ISSPP protocols, the principals, teachers, and parents from each school were interviewed. The results were analyzed using qualitative data analysis methods and tools.