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Principals
Assistant Principal Mobility and its Relationship with Principal Turnover
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Leadership, PrincipalsAssistant principals are important education personnel, both as essential members of school leadership teams and apprentice principals. However, empirical evidence on their career outcomes remains scarce. Using statewide administrative data from Tennessee and Missouri, we provide the first… more →
Descriptive evidence on school leaders' prior professional experiences and instructional effectiveness
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMany education policymakers and system leaders prioritize recruiting and developing effective school leaders as key mechanisms to improve school climate and student learning. Despite efforts to select and support successful school leaders, however, relatively little is understood about the prior… more →
Getting Tough? The Effects of Discretionary Principal Discipline on Student Outcomes
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Juvenile justice, PrincipalsNationwide, school principals are given wide discretion to use disciplinary tools like suspension and expulsion to create a safe learning environment. There is legitimate concern that this power can have negative consequences, particularly for the students who are excluded. This study uses… more →
Unequal Pay for Equal Work? Unpacking the Gender Gap in Principal Compensation
We investigate the male–female gap in principal compensation in state and national data: detailed longitudinal personnel records from the state of Missouri and repeated cross-sections from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). In both data sets, we estimate… more →
Does Principal Professional Development Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership Induction Program
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentPrincipals shape the academic setting of schools. Yet, there is limited evidence on whether principal professional development improves schooling outcomes. Beginning in 2008-09, Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program required that newly hired principals complete targeted in-… more →
Taking the Long View: State Efforts to Solve Teacher Shortages by Strengthening the Profession
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMuch is known about how to attract, develop, and retain a strong and stable teacher workforce, and states across the country are taking action to address their teacher shortages in ways that strengthen their overall teacher workforce.
Understanding and Addressing Principal Turnover: A Review of the Research
Tags: Leadership, PrincipalsThis report reviews findings from 35 major studies that speak to the question of principal turnover. Within these studies, researchers have examined principal turnover nationally and within states and districts, primarily investigating the relationships between principal turnover and various… more →
Identifying Principal Improvement
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: PrincipalsUsing statewide data from Tennessee over more than a decade, this paper estimates the job performance returns to principal experience as measured by student, teacher, and principal outcomes. I find that principals improve substantially over time, evidenced by higher student achievement, higher… more →
Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value-added to student… more →
Turnover at the Top: Estimating the Effects of Principal Turnover on Student, Teacher, and School Outcomes
Tags: Principals, School districtsOne in five schools loses its principal each year. Despite the prevalence of principal turnover, little empirical research has examined its effects on school outcomes. Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a… more →
School Principal Race and the Hiring and Retention of Racially Diverse Teachers
Exploiting variation from principal and teacher transitions over long administrative data panels in Missouri and Tennessee, we estimate the effects of principal race on the hiring and turnover of racially diverse teachers. Evidence from the two states is strikingly similar. Black principals… more →
Peeking into the Black Box of School Turnaround: A Formal Test of Mediators and Suppressors
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceA growing body of research evaluates the effects of turnaround on chronically low-performing schools. We extend this research to formally test factors that either mediate or suppress the effects of two turnaround initiatives in Tennessee: the Achievement School District (ASD) and local… more →
Policy Implementation, Principal Agency, and Strategic Action: Improving Teaching Effectiveness in New York City Middle Schools
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTen years ago, the reform of teacher evaluation was touted as a mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness. In response, virtually every state redesigned its teacher evaluation system. Recently, a growing narrative suggests these reforms failed and should be abandoned. This response may be… more →