How can school districts build a large corps of highly qualified principals? Making sure that would-be principals get the right training is one step; providing new principals with plenty of support is another. A new report describes what those two steps look like in six urban school districts working to Read more
Principals are key to improving teaching and learning in schools, but how can school district central offices give principals the support they need? Three tools designed by education researchers at the University of Washington are meant to help. Two focus on the redesign of central offices in ways that foster Read more
This tipsheet is a complement to TNTP’s latest report, Leap Year: Assessing and Supporting Effective First-Year Teachers, which shares what TNTP learned after radically evolving the way they train and evaluate new teachers. It is based on a simple idea: The first year is the most important year of a Read more
Yet another report on school reform has urged reform in the area of school leadership. This report, entitled, “Operating in the Dark: What Outdated State Policies and Data Gaps Mean for Effective School Leadership” and produced by the George W. Bush Institute and the Alliance to Reform Education Leadership. What Read more
A new partnership between the non-profit group New Leaders and Pearson Education seeks to improve the performance of school leadership through the use of technology-backed professional learning opportunities. New Leaders, the non-profit organization whose mission is to develop school leaders and promote system-wide conditions for student success, is partnering with Read more
The Wallace Foundation finds after ten years of research that the leadership principals provide to schools is the second most important factor directly impacting student performance, after only teacher performance. According to a new report prepared by the Wallace Foundation, “a national philanthropy that seeks to improve education and enrichment for Read more
Too often do we in the field of education policy end up discussing only the negatives: red tape, too little funding, changed programs, poor communication, lack of support, etc. In recent years, principals and teachers have often borne the brunt of the criticism, although research into successful schools consistently shows Read more
A new report from the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) looks at the emerging policy focus of principal accountability. In 2011, NAESP and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) created a joint Principal Evaluation Committee to develop a framework for principal evaluation for use as a Read more
Discussions about human capital and school improvement typically center on teachers. Yet the principals who select those teachers are a critical driver of school success. Just as states are beginning to address the weaknesses in their principal pipelines, a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) offers Read more
In the latest edition of the Wallace Foundation’s Perspective, the focus is again on school leadership. In “The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training,” the authors seek to discover what it will take to ensure that all public schools have leaders equal to the challenges facing the Read more
A new report from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) argues that principal evaluation systems should not be based only on student achievement gains, but on the quality of principal leadership and performance. Additionally, principals and other school-based leaders are being left out of education reform discussions. The report, called Read more
What makes for an effective principal, and how can effectiveness be measured? Thirty states have recently passed legislation to improve principal evaluation systems and are now grappling with these questions. New legislation recognizes that leadership is the second most influential factor in student achievement, after classroom teaching, but there is Read more
In a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to share ideas on how best to implement the Common Core, executive director of CCSSO Gene Wilhoit delivered a frank message: states need to take stronger positions on regulating teacher preparation and licensing standards within their jurisdiction Read more
The Center for Public Education has released a new report called The Principal Perspective, which examines what impact principals actually have on a school and how they may or may not affect school turnarounds. Existing research, of which there is little, seems to agree on several things: The job of Read more
Late last month, TNTP released a new report called Greenhouse Schools. The report seeks to identify “greenhouse schools,” or schools that “are better than others at accelerating student learning by developing and keeping great teachers.” TNTP wants to know what these schools are doing to establish such cultures. After surveying Read more
A new Wallace Perspective was released by the Wallace Foundation last month, titled “The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning.” The Perspective highlights the most important role of the school principal: creating the conditions in which the other variables known to improve student outcomes can Read more