From its beginnings in a handful of schools in Louisville, KY, the School Administration Manager Project – supported by Wallace as part of its educational leadership improvement initiative – has sought to help principals delegate some of their administrative and managerial tasks and spend more of their time interacting with teachers, students and others on instructional matters. Often, this has meant hiring a new school-level employee – a School Administration Manager, or SAM – to assume non-instructional tasks. This report, and an accompanying
executive summary examines the results to-date of the SAM project, which involved schools in 37 districts in nine states at the time of the study. The analysis, by Policy Studies Associates, finds that this approach can indeed increase the amount of time principals devote to instruction each week. But it also offers cautions, including the critical importance of ensuring that the project is well-aligned with district improvement goals.