Despite years of education reform, improved student learning, especially for the most disadvantaged, remains an elusive goal for many states and school districts. An often-missing ingredient:  high-quality leadership, which research now shows is second only to instruction among school-based factors in its impact on learning.  

Since 2000, Wallace has collaborated with selected states, and districts within those states, to help the field understand and effectively respond to key unanswered challenges: defining the essential elements of leadership, greatly improving the training of  principals and superintendents, and providing leaders with the policies, incentives and job conditions they need to raise student achievement on a wide scale.

This work, combined with a growing body of Wallace-commissioned research, is producing a range of new insights. How Leadership Influences Student Learning, by researchers at the Universities of Minnesota and Toronto, establishes the central role of leadership in improving student performance. Developing Successful Principals, a Stanford University study, describes some of the basics of sound leadership training. Buried Treasure, by the University of Washington’s Center for Reinventing Public Education, suggests how leaders can extract useful nuggets from mountains of school data.  And Beyond The Pipeline, a Wallace policy brief, argues that the core problem is not a nationwide “principal shortage,” but an inability to attract well-qualified leaders to the schools and districts that most need them. 

In each of Wallace’s three current areas of activity — arts participation, education leadership and out-of-school learning — we seek to create widespread change by sharing lessons that public and private institutions can use to promote benefits for the people they serve. Please visit the Education Leadership section of Wallace’s Knowledge Center to download publications that offer field-based insights.

Ideas in Action

Graduates of New York City’s Leadership Academy receive innovative training to run some of the City’s most challenging schools. They learn how to use data to determine which classroom practices produce student success, how to persuade faculty and families to accept needed change, and how to make changes last. Click here to learn more about this Wallace-supported program that has begun to influence training in other cities.

Partner institutions

In each of its three focus areas, The Wallace Foundation supports public and private institutions that are committed to pursuing innovative ideas and practices and producing results. Wallace sponsors their work so that their experiences and lessons can ultimately help the field nationwide.

Click here for a list of past and present partners in our education leadership work. (For more information about Wallace’s grant policies and restrictions, see our Funding Guidelines page.) To download publications that can help further your own organization’s work, please visit the Knowledge Center.