Dive Brief:
- Four years into the Wallace Foundation’s Principal Pipeline Initiative and six urban districts have logged impressive progress in training, hiring, evaluating, mentoring and otherwise supporting novice principals, according to an independent study commissioned by the foundation.
- eSchool News reports principal supervisors in these districts shifted their roles from being compliance-focused to offering on-the-job evaluations and support, and the initiative helped them improve evaluations and offer access to more mentoring and coaching.
- Districts further strengthened three other parts of the principal pipeline, defining standards and competencies for principals’ jobs, introducing more rigor into hiring that produces better fits for new principals, and figuring out how to make the assistant principal’s job a better training ground for the top spot.
Dive Insight:
While the teacher shortage has been getting a lot of attention in the public discussion about K-12 education, many districts face serious challenges in finding enough qualified people to lead their schools. The importance of strong leadership is clear from decades of studies, and school districts cannot ignore this challenge.
In Syracuse, NY, the city school district runs an Aspiring Leaders Academy, now in its fourth year, that trains as many as 25 aspiring teacher and administrator leaders per cohort. These participants eventually bring a unified vision to district leadership as they work their way up through the ranks in schools and central office administration, and they’re better prepared for the positions they ultimately fill.