In 2007, the California Academic Partnership Program (CAPP) and a small group of California high schools began a multiyear effort, the High School Leadership Initiative (HSLI). The goal of HSLI is to improve student achievement and advance educational equity by strengthening the effectiveness of leadership structures and practices in schools. The HSLI approach provides an array of supports to schools, namely, a monetary grant of $50,000 each year for five years, tailored support to schools from an assigned HSLI partner, biannual principal cohort meetings, and an annual summer seminar for school leadership teams. Eleven high schools were selected from more than 70 applicants to participate in HSLI.

In 2010, SRI was contracted to evaluate HSLI. The first report, submitted in December 2011, documented CAPP’s theory of change and the HSLI approach to building leadership capacity. That report also identified the factors that supported HSLI efforts and those that impeded progress. The second report, submitted in October 2012, coincided with the culmination of the HSLI grant and highlighted changes in HSLI schools since the beginning of the grant. The final report, to be submitted in September 2013, will document the schools’ efforts to sustain the leadership structures and practices they developed or improved on as a result of their participation in HSLI. The final report also will investigate the relationships between trends in student outcomes and a range of school characteristics, including teacher perceptions of distributed leadership.