Educational administration has evolved to focus on the leadership role of principals, superintendents, and others-including other administraiors, faculty, students, parents, ind community members-in achieving common goals, predominantly educational outcomes and student learning. The most recent work on leadership in business and industry as well as in education recognizes that the essence of leadership is the shaping of culture. While there is no complete consensus on the meaning of culture, we define it here as an immensely powerful web of shared values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs define what is right (or wrong) and establish what happens when one acts (or fails to act) in certain ways. Educational Leadership and School Culture is the first book to directly address the link between leadership and culture in schools and to do so not just with theory but with leading-edge research by recognized experts. There are many books on educational leadership and, like most of the best current treatments, the editors and contributors to this volume think of leadership as a phenomenon quite different from what many have come to associate with "educational administration." That is, leaders transform schools as well as those who inhabit them, faculty and students alike. They do this by building exceptional cultures that inculcate the sort of values that help other administrators, students, and teachers to achieve high performance outcomes.