ABSTRACT
Leadership not only matters: it is second only to teaching among school-related factors in its impact on student learning.
–Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom (2004)
Pulling It Together Throughout this textbook, site-based leadership has been mentioned frequently. At times our treatment of the concept has been direct, but most often we have only hinted at the growing role of school-based leadership, mostly intending to provoke deeper thought beyond our topics of the moment. A companion purpose, though, has been to imbue site-based leadership into our entire discussion in a very unassuming fashion-as if its prevalence is a fait accompli. Now, however, as we near the end of our introduction to school finance and resource management, the issue of site-based leadership will be addressed head-on, and we will explain more fully why it is so important to this book. Our interest has nothing to do with zealotry-rather, it comes from seeing site-based leadership as critically important to the demands of the future. As a result, we use sitebased leadership to pull together the many parts of this book as tomorrow becomes today.
