Does Leadership Matter? Examining the Relationship among Transformational Leadership, School Climate, and Student Achievement

The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between transformational leadership, school climate, and student mathematics and reading achievement. Survey data were collected from a purposeful sample of elementary school principals and a convenience sample of his or her respective teachers located in a small suburban school district in southeast Texas. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X) was used to measure the degree to which a principal displays the factors of a transformational leader based on teacher perceptions and was used by the principals surveyed to self-assess. The School Climate Inventory-Revised (SCI-R) survey was used to measure teacher perceptions of school climate. Findings indicated a positive relationship between transformational leadership and school climate. However, a relationship was not found to exist between transformational leadership and student achievement nor between school climate and student achievement. When determining whether a relationship existed between the campus principal's perceptions of their own transformational leadership qualities and his/her teachers' perceptions of those same qualities, only two out of the 25 correlations were found to be statistically significant.