To Strengthen Schools and Boost Outcomes, Invest in Principals

The Principal Effect: How Investing in School Leaders Is Key to Solving Today’s Major K-12 Challenges

This report shows how principals are essential to addressing critical issues such as teacher retention and student absenteeism and provides a road map for policymakers.

A new report explains why school principals are so essential to improving public education and provides concrete, actionable insights for policymakers to better prepare, support, and retain them.

The analysis by the Learning Policy Institute is based on an exhaustive review of reputable studies over recent decades. The bottom line is that strategic, research-based investments in school leadership are among the best ways to improve student outcomes, strengthen the educator workforce, and advance equity.

“By virtue of their role, principals influence the experiences of every person in the school,” the authors explain, and so are key to “improving teacher and student outcomes.”

Also, research shows that effective principals have a more pronounced impact in schools with a substantial share of students from historically underserved communities. Put simply, strengthening and investing in school leadership is a powerful equity strategy.

According to the report, virtually all of the studies reviewed underscore that “principal effectiveness and stability are products not just of individual skill, but of systemic support and policy designs.”

The authors highlight multiple strategies to cultivate and support effective principals. To name just a few:

Make strategic use of state licensure and approval standards to ensure high-quality preparation and approval standards;
Build robust pipelines for recruiting and preparing equity-focused school principals along with coherent systems of development and succession;
Support adequate and equitable principal compensation, including attention not only to salaries but also student loan repayment or housing support to attract and retain talent.

To learn more, join us for a webinar on June 8th where Linda Darling-Hammond, founding president and chief knowledge officer at the Learning Policy Institute; Bronwyn Bevan, Wallace’s vice president of research; and other field leaders will discuss how investing in principals is a key strategy for addressing today’s school challenges.