| Why States Might Want to Play a Stronger Role in Developing Principals | 42611 | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>States often tread lightly when it comes to strengthening the principals corps. That may be a mistake, says Paul Manna, the Hyman Professor of Government and director of the Public Policy Program at William & Mary. In his new report,<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/how-can-state-policy-support-local-school-districts-develop-principal-pipelines.aspx"> <em>How Can State Policy Support Local School Districts as They Develop Principal Pipelines?</em></a>, he writes that states could do much to encourage the development of the types of pipelines that, according to<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/principal-pipelines-a-feasible,-affordable,-and-effective-way-for-districts-to-improve-schools.aspx"> recent research</a>, can fortify school leadership. These pipelines have seven parts, or “domains”—including rigorous leader standards, high-quality pre-service principal training, strong on-the-job support and evaluation, and “leader tracking systems” with data on the career paths of aspiring and sitting principals—and they are distinctive for being<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/principal-pipeline-self-study-guide-for-districts.aspx"> “comprehensive” and “aligned.”</a> That is, they cover the range of talent management activities under a district’s purview and their parts reinforce one another. </p><p>States and local school districts working at the nexus of their intersecting policy responsibilities could build these sorts of pipelines, Manna writes, especially if states recognize that locales vary greatly and, thus, insert reasonable flexibility into policy. Few think this work will be easy, he concludes, but the payoff would be pipelines capable of producing “formidable leaders” who could “transform school communities for the better.” </p><p>In this interview, conducted by email, Manna discusses major themes from his report, which was commissioned by Wallace. </p><p><strong>The Wallace Foundation: You say that states can be reluctant to focus specifically on principals to help advance K-12 education. Why is that? And what’s the argument for states assuming a stronger role?</strong> </p><p><strong>Paul Manna:</strong> In general, principals don’t feature as largely in overall discussions about education. Learning standards, student testing and especially teachers tend to be topics that gather more attention.  Several reasons exist for this disparity. There are many more teachers out there in the world than principals, for example, making them a much larger constituency for politicians. </p><p>Why should states take on a stronger role when it comes to principals? For one thing, states possess much formal authority in areas relevant to principals like setting standards for principal preparation programs, principal licensing and evaluation. State officials, especially those new to their positions, sometimes overlook these powers and responsibilities. Another reason for states to engage is the multiplier effect that principals have on excellent teaching and learning.  Ensuring that schools have excellent principals, then, can help states achieve numerous goals that they have in education.  </p><p>State involvement can also help advance the goals of equity in education. Compelling research shows that just as students from underrepresented groups tend to lack access to excellent teachers, they also lack access to excellent principals. Addressing that persistent and pressing need will require state and local leadership. School districts cannot address it alone. </p><p><strong>WF: How should states decide which domains to focus on?</strong> </p><p><strong>PM:</strong> Identifying an area for focused attention and energy depends entirely on the policy and political landscape within a state. Some states have made more progress in some areas than others.  That’s okay and to be expected in a nation as vast as the United States with its fragmented systems of education governance within each state. Picking topics where there is interest and a critical mass of political support could be one way to decide. It might be challenging in a state, for example, to muster support for overhauling principal preparation, a key element of principal pipelines. But it might be easier to adjust processes for principal licensing or license renewal. Or take the role of data use and leader tracking systems. The complexity of getting different data systems to talk with one another to support principal pipelines can be overwhelming. Determining which improvements to state systems can have the most leverage or be done most rapidly to support pipeline work could be one way to set priorities, rather than tackling everything at once. Dialogues between state and local leaders and other principal pipeline supporters will be essential for charting paths forward. </p><p><strong>WF: Are there one or two key actions that every state should look at closely?</strong> </p><p><strong>PM:</strong> Yes, two things seem very promising and, fortunately, are not that expensive either. A first state action would be to adopt and <em>put into practice</em> (that’s the most important part!) standards that drive state policy and, in turn, help bolster comprehensive and aligned principal pipeline efforts at local levels. That means when states adopt standards for principals those standards are then reflected in the areas of preparation, licensing, evaluation and professional development, for example. The standards are actually used to steer people across the state towards positive activities and behaviors that will help principals succeed on the job. In other words, standards don’t just live as unused documents—“dead letters”—in dusty binders or hidden away on agency websites where nobody will see them or use them. They are critical for organizing conversations, and helping to align state policy and local pipeline efforts in productive ways.  </p><p>A second state action would be to take seriously the state’s power as a convener. States can help foster networks between school districts that are contemplating or developing comprehensive and aligned principal pipelines. That can be an especially valuable contribution for rural districts, which typically lack economies of scale and capacity to begin initiatives like this on their own. Additionally, the convening power of the state also can come into play when states serve as switchboards for collating and distributing valuable information about best practices in principal pipelines. There is a burgeoning research literature in this area that a state could make available to its districts in various ways. That could help districts that find this work overwhelming, or are new it, learn from the experiences of others. </p><p><strong>WF: We were struck by one creative possibility for state action that you mention—using principal licensure renewal as a way to cultivate principal mentors. How would that work?</strong> </p><p><strong>PM:</strong> This idea of leveraging the licensing process to promote mentorship is motivated by a couple of findings that come out of the literature. One is that the principalship can be a very lonely job and that strong mentoring is something that principals crave. The other is that good mentoring or professional development around mentoring that is grounded in research-based practices can be expensive and often is the first thing to be cut from state or district budgets when money is tight.  </p><p>How to get principals more great mentoring, then? The idea here would be to tie the development of mentors and the practice of mentorship to the licensing that veteran principals need to pursue after they’ve been on the job for a while. To be clear, I’m not referring to the initial license that a new principal receives, but the process of re-licensing. Across education, for teachers, principals and other school professionals, renewing one’s license often amounts to a box-checking exercise where people accumulate some number of continuing education credits or hours, which often involves grabbing whatever opportunities people can get. The result is a license renewal process that often lacks coherence and meaning and, sadly, does not contribute to improved practice. But because we know that principal mentoring is such a valuable activity, state policies that govern licensing could create opportunities (the convening role, again) or incentives for current principals to consider pursuing training to become mentors and then serving as mentors either in their own district or in other districts across their state. The hours principals devote to these activities then could count as hours that go toward the hours required for renewing their licenses. The result would be a much more productive, coherent and relevant set of activities tied to the license renewal process. Such activities also would help enhance the work of comprehensive and aligned local principal pipelines, which could benefit from an overall broader availability of principal mentors across a state. </p><p><strong>WF: A </strong><a href="/knowledge-center/pages/using-state-level-policy-levers-to-promote-principal-quality.aspx" target="_blank"><strong>2020 study from RAND</strong></a><strong>, considering principal preparation in seven states, found that none of the states had a statewide leader tracking system. Why should states consider developing these systems to help advance work on principal pipelines?</strong> </p><p><strong>PM:</strong> Pretty much everyone in state policy-making positions or in school district or school leadership positions today will proudly state that they are “data driven” in their work. One of the big challenges for using data to guide practice, though, is that data systems frequently live in silos that rarely talk with one another. (That is not only a problem in education, by the way, but it is common in many fields.) Such silos can create problems for a state or for local school districts that want to support the work of comprehensive and aligned principal pipelines. It would be ideal, for example, to have a data dashboard that could reveal the pre-service preparation and learning experiences of principals; the venues where they’ve worked as principals and levels of success they’ve enjoyed; the particular skills and knowledge they bring to the work based on prior teaching, personal characteristics or other work experience; their continuing education experiences; and their proximity to retirement age. That could help school districts, and the state as a supporting partner, forecast emerging needs and make targeted efforts to help develop principals with high-demand skill sets.  </p><p>The unfortunate reality today is that many of these data exist, but they live in separate systems that are firewalled from one another. In situations where those barriers can safely come down in ways that ensure data integrity and security, it would go a long way toward seeding the development of tracking systems that local school districts could use. States have potentially big roles to play here because the world of data governance is tightly tied to state policies and regulations, including state regulations that interpret federal policy. It also is asking quite a lot to simply leave the construction of these tracking systems and data dashboards entirely to local school districts. There is a ton of complexity and expense involved, which is beyond the reach of school districts that lack the technical capabilities and people power required to stand up these systems on their own. Partnerships with the states over data governance and use are essential, then. </p> | Wallace editorial team | 79 | | 2021-11-17T05:00:00Z | Author of new report says states can do much to help districts cultivate “formidable leaders” who can transform schools. | | 11/17/2021 1:00:11 PM | The Wallace Foundation / News and Media / Wallace Blog / Why States Might Want to Play a Stronger Role in Developing Principals Author of new report says states can do much to help | 846 | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx | html | False | aspx | |
| Ensuring That Every Student Succeeds | 23757 | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>When Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, it made a bi-partisan decision to devolve authority over federal education spending away from Washington, D.C. Now, it’s up to states and school districts to show that they are up to the challenge of deciding how best to use U.S. dollars to bolster public education for all students.    <br></p><p><img src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Ensuring-that-Every-Student-Succeeds/Brogan_Pix-crop2.jpg" alt="Brogan_Pix-crop2.jpg" class="wf-Image-Left" style="margin:5px;" />That was the key message from Frank T. Brogan, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, at a recent Wallace Foundation conference.  “Is every child better off as a result,” he urged audience members to ask themselves, noting that he finds “every” the key word in the Every Student Succeeds Act. “That’s an awesome responsibility. There are 50 million of them out there.”<br></p><p>Brogan made his comments at a gathering of about 200 local and state education officials, representatives of university principal preparation programs and other education leaders from around the country. ESSA, the latest reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is a leading source of support for public school education and is notable for giving states and localities more control over their use of federal education money. It also offers new possibilities for funding efforts to boost school leadership—a particular interest of the conference attendees, most of whom were   participants in Wallace’s ESSA Leadership Learning Community and University Principal Preparation Initiative.</p><p>Brogan said ESSA was “as important and pronounced a piece of legislation as I have seen come out of Washington, D.C., in decades.” The law’s underlying assumption, he said, is a belief that those closest to children—their schools, their communities, their districts, their states—are in a better position than federal officials to determine the students’ educational needs and how to meet them. Local educators, he said, “live with these children, they see them every day.… They know the challenges these children bring to school.” </p><p>At the same time, the law gives states and districts the weighty responsibility of showing that Congress made the right decision in placing new powers in their hands. “What ESSA is designed to say is, ‘we trust you,’” Brogan told the audience, emphasizing that what Congress giveth, Congress can also take away.  “If we don’t take up that mantle of local control and flexibility and create the same, they will snatch this bad boy away from us before we knew we had it,” he said. “We have to prove that we are worthy of that trust and find ways to reach children we have not been able to reach or reach them at higher levels.”</p><p>Brogan said that those who want to improve education need to avoid suggesting that current practices are bad—and focus instead on the idea that “by most standard measures” children today “are capable of more.” Educators and education officials, he argued, also need the “courage” to identify what requires changing and then make the necessary moves, despite inevitable pushback from others. “You can’t just open the window and yell ‘work harder;’ you have to work differently,” Brogan said.</p><p>One aid in this endeavor is evidence, Brogan argued, saying that educators nationwide are “desperate” to learn about innovations that have proved effective in classrooms elsewhere. “The beauty of funding evidence-based change is that it’s not just this shiny object,” he said. “This thing works. It can work for our children.” He noted that the U.S. Department of Education is creating a new unit to make it easier to get information about evidence-based practices. As part of an effort to consolidate the work of roughly 25 offices into 14 offices, the department has put the Office of Innovation under the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which Brogan heads.</p><p>Asked about how the Department’s policies would help achieve equity in education, Brogan pointed to data as a key lever: “You can’t address what you can’t see,” he said. “The data alone won’t guarantee that you know what the problem is, but it will allow a confidence in trendlines that will enable people to stop and get them to talk about this.”</p><p>One of his priorities in leading an office responsible for distributing about $23 billion annually in grants, Brogan said, is to balance the need for adherence to grant requirements with the need for user-friendliness. A self-described “customer-relationship guy,” Brogan said that he wants “to know what the customer satisfaction rates are for our clients… and then I want to have conversations within and without the department about how we can change that to be a more user-friendly group.” </p><p>Although most of his talk focused on ESSA, Brogan began his remarks by recounting his journey from modest beginnings in Lafayette, Indiana, to his arrival to a position of influence in the nation’s capital. Brogan’s father died when Brogan and his five siblings were young. The family was raised by a single mother with an 8th grade education—and a determination to see her children advance beyond what their circumstances suggested. Working in restaurants and cleaning houses to support the family, she also managed to instill the value of education in all her kids. “She was a rock star in our neighborhood,” Brogan said. “She was unique in that all six of her children graduated from high school. At that time, it was a cause célèbre. I survived my first 18 years on the blunt end of this woman’s will. Failure was not an option. We were going to get an education. She professed it with great regularity and extreme passion.”</p><p>The challenge posed by ESSA is whether states and districts can harness this type of fierce belief in the power of education to ensure that every child can succeed in life.</p><p>For a look at evidence-based funding opportunities for school leadership under ESSA see <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/school-leadership-interventions-every-student-succeeds-act-volume-1.aspx">here</a>.</p> | Wallace editorial team | 79 | | 2019-03-06T05:00:00Z | Federal education official urges local, state officials to prove “worthy” of the trust put in them by ESSA | | 3/6/2019 7:33:33 PM | The Wallace Foundation / News and Media / Wallace Blog / Ensuring That Every Student Succeeds Federal education official urges local, state officials to prove “worthy” of the trust | 1883 | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx | html | False | aspx | |
| ‘Logic Models’ Prompt Hard Thinking About How to Achieve Results in Education | 42491 | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>If you were planning a trip to a far-flung spot, you’d likely map the route, figuring out how to get from Starting Point A to Destination Point D and identifying what combination of planes, trains, and automobiles would take you through Points B and C. </p><p>Well, maybe for vacation travelers. But not always, it seems, for voyagers of a different sort: organizations that embark on an effort to solve a thorny civic or social problem in the hope that this can lead to good outcomes for those affected. Too often, the would-be problem-solvers fail to clearly define the issue that concerns them—their departure Point A, you might say—and then plot out the path that will take them to intermediate progress—Points B and C—and, finally, a solution and the benefits it reaps, Point D.  </p><p>That’s where a “logic model” comes in. No, the term refers neither to a brainiac runway star nor a paragon of rationality. Rather, a logic model is a kind-of map, says Wallace’s director of research and evaluation Ed Pauly, showing “why, logically, you’d expect to get the result you are aiming for.”</p><p>Logic models are on the minds of people at Wallace these days because of a
<a href="/knowledge-center/pages/logic-models-evidence-based-school-leadership-interventions.aspx">RAND Corp. guide</a> we published recently to assist states and school districts planning for funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a major source of federal support for public education. The guide focuses on initiatives to expand the supply of effective principals, especially for high-needs schools. It describes how logic models can show the guardians of ESSA dollars that six types of school leadership “interventions” have a solid rationale, even though they are not yet backed by rigorous research. </p><p>Take, for example, one of the six interventions: better  practices for hiring school principals. The logic model begins with a problem—high-needs schools find it difficult to attract and retain high-quality principals—and ends with the hoped-for outcome of solving this problem: “improved principal competencies→ improved schools→ improved student achievement,” as RAND puts it. In between are the activities thought to lead to the end, such as the introduction of new techniques for recruiting and hiring effective principals, as well as the short-term results they logically point to, such as the development of a larger pool of high-quality school leader candidates.</p><p>Helpful as they may be for persuading the feds to fund a worthy idea, logic models may have an even more important purpose: testing the assumptions behind a large and expensive undertaking before it gets under way. The roots of this notion, Pauly says, go back to 1990s and the community of researchers tasked with evaluating the effects of large, complex human services programs.  </p><p>As Pauly explains it, researchers were feeling frustration on two fronts—that programs they’d investigated as whole appeared to have had little impact
<em>and</em> that the reasons for the lackluster showing were elusive. “It was a big puzzle,” Pauly says. “People were trying innovations, and they were puzzled by not being able to understand where they worked and where they didn’t.”</p><p>Into this fray, he says, entered Carol Hirschon Weiss, a Harvard expert in the evaluation of social programs. In an influential 1995
<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/150652416/Nothing-as-Practical-as-a-Good-Theory-Exploring-Theory-Based-Evaluation-for-Comprehensive-Community-Initiatives-for-Children-and-Families">essay</a>, Weiss asserted that any social program is based on “theories of change,” implied or stated ideas about how an effort will work and why. Given that, she urged evaluators to shift from a strict focus on measuring a program’s outcomes to identifying the program operators’ basic ideas and their consequences as the program unfolded.  </p><p>“The aim is to examine the extent to which program theories hold,” she wrote. “The evaluation should show which of the assumptions underlying the program break down, where they break down, and which of the several theories underlying the program are best supported by the evidence.”  She also urged researchers to look at the series of “micro-steps” that compose program implementation and examine the assumptions behind these, too.</p><p>Weiss identified a number of reasons that evaluators might want to adopt this approach; among other things, confirming or disproving social program theories could foster better public policy, she said. But Weiss also made strikingly persuasive arguments about why partners in a complex social-change endeavor would want to think long and hard together before a program launch—including that reflection could unearth differences in views about a program’s purpose and rationale. That, in turn, could lead to the forging of a new consensus among program partners, to say nothing of refined practices and “greater focus and concentration of program energies,” she wrote.</p><p>There could be a lesson in this for the complex array of people involved in efforts to create a larger corps of effective principals—school district administrators, university preparation program leaders and principals themselves, to name just few. They may give themselves a better chance of achieving beneficial change if they first achieve a common understanding of what they seek to accomplish.    </p><p>In other words, it helps when everyone on the journey is using the same map. </p><p>
<img class="wf-Image-Left" alt="ED_5991-160px.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Logic-Models-Prompt-Hard-Thinking-About-How-to-Achieve-Results-in-Education-/ED_5991-160px.jpg" style="margin:5px;" /> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><table width="100%" class="wf-Table-default" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr></tr></tbody></table>
<p>Ed Pauly,  director of <br>research and evaluation,<br> The Wallace Foundation </p><table width="100%" class="wf-Table-default" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="wf-Table-default" style="width:100%;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p>*The title of Weiss’s essay is
<em>Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families</em>.</p> | Pamela Mendels | 46 | | 2018-01-30T05:00:00Z | ‘Logic Models’ Prompt Hard Thinking About How to Achieve Results in Education | | 4/4/2018 3:37:36 PM | The Wallace Foundation / News and Media / Wallace Blog / ‘Logic Models’ Prompt Hard Thinking About How to Achieve Results in Education Charting the Path to Social Change Before You | 8304 | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx | html | False | aspx | |
| Advice on State Policy and Ed Leadership | 23651 | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 |
<p>Poet Robert Burns instructs us that even the best laid plans can go awry. Political scientist Paul Manna tells us one reason that’s so. The people writing the plans, he says, too often fail to think through what they are asking of the people doing the work. </p><p><img class="wf-Image-Left" alt="manna_pix3.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Advice-on-State-Policy-and-Ed-Leadership/manna_pix3.jpg" style="margin:5px;" />Manna, the <a href="http://pmanna.people.wm.edu/">Hyman Professor of Government at William & Mary</a> and author of a Wallace-commissioned <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/developing-excellent-school-principals.aspx">report examining levers states can pull to bolster principal effectiveness</a>, explored this disconnect recently. The occasion was a meeting of Wallace grantees working to expand the circle of highly effective school principals.</p><p>The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was a central topic of interest in Manna’s two keynote speeches. Passed in late 2015 as the latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESSA is a leading source of federal dollars for public school education that departs from the past in at least two important ways—giving more authority to states on how to use their federal dollars and, of particular significance to the meeting attendees, offering new possibilities for funding efforts to boost school leadership. </p><p>Clearly, states are exploring how to use ESSA funding to enable principals to function as effectively as possible, whether through upgraded pre-service training or other means.  <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/state-efforts-to-strengthen-school-leadership.aspx">One recent survey of representatives from 25 states</a> taking part in a school leadership effort offered by the Council of Chief State School Officers found, for example, that fully 91 percent consider incorporation of principal-focused work into ESSA school improvement plans a priority. </p><p><img class="wf-Image-Right" alt="Capture--mannalist.jpg" src="/News-and-Media/Blog/PublishingImages/Pages/Advice-on-State-Policy-and-Ed-Leadership/Capture--mannalist.jpg" style="margin:5px;" />But how best to do this incorporation? Manna advised his audience to avoid devising plans that overlook something basic—the “implied critical tasks” that need to get accomplished if the plans are to unfold as intended. Doable plans, he suggested, emerge from an understanding of what they require of the doers—state education agency officials, school district managers, principals—“when they wake up and go to work.” </p><p>Too often, planners falter on this point.  “People who make policy don’t always think about—or know about—how the work will be done on the ground,” Manna said in a conversation after his addresses. “So there’s a typical kind of top-down view, which is why so many things don’t get carried out well.”</p><p>Planners would also do well to understand whether their hoped-for policies will heap additional helpings of work on principals’ already heavily laden plates. In his report, Manna cites survey findings suggesting that principals believe they are being called on to do more than ever, “exercising more and more power over matters such as evaluating teachers and setting school performance standards…[while] remain[ing] equally responsible for traditional activities, such as setting school discipline policies and managing budgets and school spending.”</p><p>Manna suggests a possible solution to this. Look at the last chapter of his report, which counsels state policymakers to “catalogue principals’ tasks, in theory and in practice” and to compare what principals actually do with what policies aspire to have them do. The exercise is likely to be an eye-opener for those charged with shaping state policy and might just aid them in using ESSA to its fullest advantage in bolstering principals.</p><p>“People are saying this is a moment where we can rethink what we’ve learned over the last decade or more, where we can rethink roles and responsibilities,” Manna told the audience. “And states themselves are supposed to be leading this charge.” </p>
<a href="https://youtu.be/N8n1MhuFwyo">A video with excerpts from Manna’s talks</a> to the December 2017 gathering of participants in Wallace’s University Principal Preparation Initiative is available at our Knowledge Center.
| Wallace editorial team | 79 | | 2018-01-11T05:00:00Z | Good ESSA Plans Recognize What’s Needed to Get the Education Job Done | | 3/20/2018 3:31:47 PM | The Wallace Foundation / News and Media / Wallace Blog / Advice on State Policy and Ed Leadership For Good ESSA Planning, Understand What Tasks Get the Job Done, Says Political | 1180 | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx | html | False | aspx | |
| Principals Matter. So do their Supervisors. Just Ask the States. | 42530 | GP0|#330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708;L0|#0330c9173-9d0f-423a-b58d-f88b8fb02708|School Leadership;GTSet|#a1e8653d-64cb-48e0-8015-b5826f8c5b61 | <p>It’s not the most colorful job title in an era awash with “chief cheerleaders,” “digital prophets” and even “VPs of misc. stuff.” (Thank you Forbes magazine for <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshlinkner/2014/12/04/the-21-most-creative-job-titles/#7c5f9c0d2933">the moniker list</a>.) Still, give “principal supervisor” its due. You know immediately what the person holding this title does: oversee school principals. </p><p>That would suggest the principal supervisor holds a pretty important job. After all, principals are <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/how-leadership-influences-student-learning.aspx">key to improving schools</a>.  Ideally, then, supervisors would spend their time supporting their principals in ways that improve teaching and learning. </p><p>For years, however, this hasn’t been the case, as principal supervisors are too often saddled with job descriptions that expect at least as much attention to handling operations and ensuring compliance with regulations as helping principals make classrooms hum. It’s a function, in part, of the number of people supervisors typically oversee: about 24 principals, when a job focused on principal support would, according to a management rule of thumb, be something like half that number.   </p><p>We’ve posted <a href="/knowledge-center/pages/state-efforts-to-strengthen-school-leadership.aspx">a report</a> that offers a small bit of evidence that this may be starting to change, or, at least, that state policymakers are beginning to give the supervisor role a rethink.  The publication looks at the work of about two dozen states involved in an effort (run by the Council of Chief State School Officers and funded by The Wallace Foundation) to help boost school leadership. It details results of a survey of state officials who signed up for the effort, and while the findings are not representative of U.S. states as a whole, they offer insight into what a substantial number of states are thinking about and doing these days when it comes to school leadership. </p><p>The most common concern was boosting mentoring for principals, with 77 percent of respondents naming this a “current or emerging priority” for their states. But close behind, at 75 percent, came two other activities: professional development programs for new principals <em>and</em>—this is what caught our eye—“improving principal supervisor practices in the support and development of principals.” Moreover, the respondents made clear that this represented a big departure for them; only 6 percent labelled it an area of “past progress or accomplishment.” </p><p>The report also makes clear that some states have taken steps to help supervisors in their work with principals.  Kentucky’s optional evaluation system, for example, includes a framework for supervisors to work with each principal on an annual professional growth plan through site visits and formal reviews. In Connecticut, the state and its superintendent’s association provide an executive coaching program that includes a focus on support for principals in struggling schools. And Idaho trains superintendents and principal teams in how to carry out its principal evaluation system. </p><p>States have yet, however, to budge when it comes to the “principal supervisor” title.  Don’t expect “top school leadership evangelist” on business cards anytime soon.  </p><p align="center">****</p><p>Want to find out more about principal supervisors?  Wallace is currently supporting a group of school districts that are recrafting the job, and we’ve <a href="/knowledge-center/school-leadership/pages/principal-supervisors.aspx">published a number of reports</a> about the issue. </p>
| Wallace editorial team | 79 | | 2017-12-06T05:00:00Z | A survey suggests U.S. states want to boost the principal supervisor job. | | 4/4/2018 4:04:06 PM | The Wallace Foundation / News and Media / Wallace Blog / Principals Matter A survey suggests state interest in a previously overlooked position It’s not the most colorful job title | 483 | https://www.wallacefoundation.org/News-and-Media/Blog/Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx | html | False | aspx | |