District fiscal leadership and school effectiveness in small, rural Texas schools

Prior school effectiveness research has failed to examine sufficiently the multidimensional nature of District Fiscal Leadership (DFL) and its relationship to School Effectiveness (SE). Studies instead have focused narrowly on the examination of school resources as input variables in relation to student achievement, thus ignoring the decision-making role of the district fiscal leader. This study explores the possible empirical linkages between DFL and SE. This study investigated empirical linkages between DFL and SE through initial development of a literature-grounded District Fiscal Leadership-School Effectiveness (DFL-SE) model. The DFL-SE model was used as a basis for the development of a new District Fiscal Leadership Inventory (DFLI), as none presently exists. The DFLI measures administrator perceptions of their own resource management and leadership practices. The preliminary DFLI was developed, piloted, and refined in order to conduct the initial investigation of the research questions in the study. The DFLI was administered to superintendents of Texas school districts classified as small and rural according to the Texas Education Agency. To investigate bivariate and multivariate relationships between DFL and SE, multiple DFL dimension/subscales served as an independent variable set in the study. The dependent variable set included three indices of school effectiveness - Index of Perceived Organizational Effectiveness (IPOE), Holding Power (HP) as indicated by student attendance and dropout rate, and Student Academic Achievement (SAA) as measured by student performance on the math and English Language Arts (ELA) Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests in small, rural Texas school districts.