The current press for accountability and sustainable school reforms has intensified demands on high school principals to focus on leadership actions and behaviors that influence student learning outcomes. In addition, this reform environment suggests an emerging trend in our understanding of leadership capacity in high schools—distributed instructional leadership. In this paper, I describe how high school principals along with department chairpersons in six urban school districts have had to rethink their traditional responsibilities for successful management of structures, cultures, and daily operations. In the paper I highlight key findings on the development of distributed instructional leadership teams in six urban high schools and the development of department chairpersons as instructional leaders. In the final section of the paper I discuss implications for developing DIL in urban high schools. We also examine implications for pre-service preparation programs and professional development for instructional leaders. Lastly, I consider how the trends in distributed instructional leadership can be viewed as policy levers to create, support, and sustain reform and enhanced student learning and development in urban high schools.