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Purpose: This multiple case study investigated district leaders' orientations and strategies as their elementary schools proceeded with state-mandated implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). We identified differences between schools achieving above-predicted outcomes on state CCSS assessments ("odds-beaters") and schools achieving predicted outcomes ("typical performers"). Theory: The implementation of multiple race-to-the-top (RTTT) innovations recommends a theoretical hybrid consisting of policy implementation theory, leadership theory, organizational change theory, and organizational learning theory, especially learning-focused leadership strategies such as bridging, brokering, and buffering strategies for crafting coherence across organizational boundaries. (1) identify themes that might differentiate the two kinds of sample schools and their district leaders. Findings: District leaders for odds-beating schools anticipated the state's policy innovations and developed organizational capacity for RTTT innovation implementation. Leaders permitted CCSS adaptations and they employed bridging, brokering, and buffering strategies to craft coherence and facilitate organizational learning and improvement. Conclusions: Odds-beating district leaders played pivotal roles in developing organizational readiness and implementation capacity. Whereas the RTTT agenda in typical districts amounted to a second-order, disruptive change, the odds-beating leaders in this study were instrumental in making this same agenda a first-order change.

This mixed-method multiple case study investigated nine elementary schools. Six "odds-beating schools," which serve relatively high numbers of economically disadvantaged children, achieved higher than predicted performance on state assessments when compared with three typically performing schools. The overarching research question guiding this study was: What forces, factors, and actors account for odds-beating schools' better outcomes? The trust-communication connection provided one answer. Relational trust in odds-beating schools is an intraorganizational phenomenon, and it is accompanied by interorganizational trust (reciprocal trust). These two kinds of trust are accompanied by intraschool and district officeschool communication mechanisms. Trust and communications are mutually constitutive as innovations are implemented. This connection is also an implementation outcome. When today's innovation implementation initiatives reinforce this trust-communication connection, it becomes an organizational resource for future innovation implementation.

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Scaling up innovation in the instructional core remains a vexing proposition. Such disruptive innovations require teachers to engage in performance adaptation. Schools vary in their capacity to support changes in teachers' daytoday work. By comparing distributed instructional leadership practices of "odds-beating" schools with those at "typically performing schools," this study identified four qualities of distributed instructional leadership that drive teacher performance adaptation: collective goal setting, instructional feedback, collective guided learning, and trusting relationships. These findings reiterate the need for policy to go beyond standards and accountability mandates to focus on the right drivers of change: capacity building, and opportunities for collaboration in tandem with pedagogical improvement.