After years of hearing that a principal’s main job should be to raise
the quality of instruction, districts and states are experimenting with ways to make that ideal a reality. New policies are emerging to give principals more of the time, training, and tools to become leaders of school improvement, rather than managers of operations.

Principals don’t teach students, but they do affect student achievement. Kenneth Leithwood, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Toronto who co-wrote a new review of research on leadership effectiveness, says leadership characteristics are the second- strongest predictor of a school’s effect on student results. Only classroom factors, such as teacher quality, are stronger.

"It’s not that those in leadership roles are having a dramatic direct influence," says Leithwood. "But those things that do have a direct influence are quite substantially affected by what people in leadership do."

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http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/09/15/03overview.h24.html