This paper will present findings from a school development project (2013-2016) serving approximately 25 schools in Southern Arizona, both public (traditional and charter) and private. The school development project aims to build leadership team capacity for curriculum work and equal opportunity for all students.

Recent policy (e.g., national standards, evaluation, privatization) and societal changes (e.g., neoliberalism, globalization) have illuminated complex changes for schools, including increasingly centralized curriculum, and changing demographics/immigration patterns. Schools are also pressured to improve effectiveness defined by student academic performance on standardized tests. However, U.S. student demographics do not reflect uniformity (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013); Latino(a) populations are increasing dramatically. Similarly, many countries have experienced changing immigration patterns.  Impacts of these global population migrations along with more centralized curriculum and external evaluation policies are visible in schools globally, (e.g., U.S., Finland, Norway, Mexico), thus increasing the demand for culturally responsive practices as part of effective leadership. Many schools also serve high percentages of children living in poverty in the wake of the 2008 recession. Such demographic shifts and economic challenges have impacted not only the U.S., but schools internationally and have changed the landscape of school development and leadership effectiveness.

School effectiveness studies were initially conducted in the wake the Coleman Report (1966), concluding that school-based poverty concentrations had greater impact on student achievement than school-based efforts. In response t, many U.S. scholars (e.g. Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986) examined “outlier” schools or those schools that were “effective” with all students regardless of socioeconomic status. More recently, international studies (e.g. Day, 2009; Drysdale, Goode, & Gurr, 2009; Leithwood, Harris & Strauss, 2010; Author, 2011) illustrated how exemplary principals of challenging schools contributed to school turnaround processes in England, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.; however, we know much less about how effective leadership development occurs in culturally diverse settings.

Investigations into success factors for school development have pointed to the need for a system-wide perspective in understanding leadership for school development. Lateral and hierarchical cooperation and professional responsibility have been regarded as crucial for moving schools forward beyond high-stake testing (Hargreaves, 2007). Additionally, there is growing evidence about the importance of collaboration to effective leadership (e.g. Marks & Printy, 2003; Author, 2013) yet research does not explicitly integrate culturally responsive practices into system-wide practices for collaboration.Inspired by these trends, we designed a school development project, the Arizona Initiative for Leadership Development and Research (AZiLDR). Our theory of action states: school principals and teachers in underperforming schools within high-needs districts who learn about leadership capacity (e.g. Day, 2005), curricular/instructional leadership content (e.g. Leithwood, et al., 2010; Author, 2013; Author, 2014), and curricular content through a combination of delivery components (direct instruction, regional meetings, coaching/walk-throughs) build curriculum work-leadership capacity to diffuse the AZiLDR model throughout their schools and, ultimately, improve student outcomes in K-12 and equity in post-secondary opportunities.

Six features distinguish the design of the AZiLDR project:  1) a focus on schools that areunderperforming; 2) research-based curricular/instructional team leadership content (i.e., school culture, professional learning communities, content and instructional strategies, culturally responsive practices); 3) an intensive professional development program delivered through direct instruction/institutes as well as ongoing regional meetings (professional network) whereby educators experience capacity building firsthand as they extend and apply the content received in the institutes; 4) explicit attention to culture and context (district, school, community); 5) on-site, evidence-based coaching support with walk-throughs that provide feedback to teams and individual teachers; and 6) reflection and dialogue. This delivery system was designed based on national research on effective professional development (Desimone, et al., 2002) as well as literature on curriculum work-leadership (Author, 2014; Author, 2011).

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