McREL's report on this data analysis lists only 55 of those 70 studies in its reference list, and perhaps the count is really 54 given that 2 references seem to be of the same study reported in different venues (a peer-reviewed conference and a scholarly journal). Of those identifiable sources, 49 (91%) are listed as unpublished dissertations, and 11 are included in Hallinger and Heck's (1996, 1998) metaanalysis. Of those 11, Hallinger and Heck classify 6 as direct effects designs that they conclude are conceptually weak and practically useless in addressing research questions concerning instructional leadership. Given the National Research Council's calls for improvements in educational research that includes replication and generalization across studies as well as full disclosure for the purposes of professional scrutiny and critique (Shavelson & Towne, 2002; Towne etal., 2005), McREL's funded work on instructional leadership apparently suffers from several flaws in research rigor promoted by proponents of scientific research (Shavelson & Towne, 2002; Towne et al., 2005).