The path to the principal’s office is often filled with classroom experience, multiple certifications and a bit of politicking along the way. Unfortunately this path is not consistent for all principles nor is it based on a series of events put together because high quality research has shown successful leadership and student achievement.
Lately I have been conducting and reviewing a significant amount of research on teachers and school leaders as you probably seen from the work on my website. From this endeavor, I have seen some notable trends. The first is that principals hold significant responsibility in our schools with their leadership having a significant influence on school culture, policy, and practices. But again, their training and certification is often not based on high quality research.
In its infancy stage, principal preparation program (PPP) research must careful consider factors such as tenure, experience, and a myriad of attributes and competencies that principals bring to the successful management of any school. To date, research has suggested both direct and indirect effects of principal on student learning with Branch, Hunshek, and Rivkin (2013) noting “highly effective principals raise the achievement of a typical student in their schools by between two and seven months of learning in a single year.”
Recently I conducted a research study on the impact of the National Institute for School Leadership’s Executive Development Program (NISL-EDP) on student achievement in a large school district in the Midwestern United States. Studying achievement of elementary and middle school students, some principals had been through NISL-EDP and other participants were non-EDP trained principals. The outcome measure was the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE).
The results of this work proved that students in schools led by NISL EDP principals realized similar mathematics and reading gains compared to their non-NISD counterparts. Perhaps more important than the results is that this research brings to light the need for large-scale randomized studies in the area of PPP. For this current project, researchers did not have the luxury of randomization of assigning students and principals to schools. The number of students in each school and how principals were selected for NISL-EDP training also contributed to a sample of convenience and therefore limited generalization.
Educational accountability has seen rapid growth over the last decades with educators at all levels being held responsible for student achievement. With a myriad of issues, principals have been brought to the forefront of the discussion in their ability to improve overall school effectiveness. While training is needed to increase principal effectiveness, any programs should be evaluated by a high quality research design.