Research tells us that among school-related influences, lead­ership is second only to teaching in determining what stu­dents do or do not learn in school. Over the past eight years, The Wallace Foundation has been working with 22 states and numerous districts to improve student achievement by strengthening education leadership. Drawing on lessons learned, the foundation developed a working hypothesis called the Cohesive Leadership System (CLS) — a system­atic, coordinated approach to policies at the state and district levels that determines who leads, what they are expected to do, how they are trained, and the conditions in which they work. As Wallace’s 2006 Perspective paper Leadership for Learning explains, “The degree to which these policies are or are not well-aligned, in turn, ultimately influences the suc­cess of schools, their leaders, and leadership teams in im­proving student learning.”

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State Innovations - Iowa’s Cohesive Leadership System