Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ leadership behavior and school performance in secondary schools of kafa zone. Correlation research design was employed to explain the existing relationship between principal leadership behavior and school performance. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The populations of this study were all secondary schools in Kafa zone. The sample of this study was 130 students, 131 teachers and 27 school leaders with a total of 288 participants. The sample schools were selected using purposive sampling technique. Used sampling techniques were stratified, simple random and availability for students, teachers and school leaders respectively. The collected data were analyzed using frequency, mean, percentage and Pearson’s Correlation to test the relationship between principals’ leadership behavior and school performance. The finding of the study showed that there is a strong relationship between participative principals’ leadership behavior and school performance because of the coefficient of Pearson’s correlation is a positive 74.3%. Conclusion of the study showed that the level of the school is not improved, hence the behavior of school leaders is not improved; the performance of the schools are poor due to leaders application of leadership behaviors which are bureaucratic and the relationship between the participative leadership behavior and school performance is very strong. Finally the researcher recommends that Principals not have to be rigid on their conditioned leadership behavior unless it is not successful in improving the performance of the school; they have to be participatory leaders who are skilled with setting the goal of the school with stake holders, planning together, acting together and in general working in harmony and cooperatively to sustain the improvement of the performance of the school which is the target goal of the education sector.
