The Progress of Education Reform: Teacher Leaders PDF - This issue of The Progress of Education Reform discusses the roles teacher leaders can play; how they can contribute to overall school and student success; how some states are formally supporting teacher leaders and the concept of teacher leadership; and policy implications and recommendations for state policymakers on how to explore and/or expand teacher leadership in their states....

Strong Leaders, Strong Achievement: Model Policy for Producing the Leaders to Drive Student Success PDF - A good deal of research in the area of leadership has helped to generate broad agreement on what constitutes a comprehensive leadership program or policy. Positive measures such as the Educational Leadership Policy Standards (Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium, or ISLLC) have helped inform the development and improvement of many leadership programs and policies. The risk, however, is that in implementing a "comprehensive" set of standards or requirements, those elements noted by research as most critical to improving achievement can simply become another box on a check-off list. The purpose of this brief is to help reduce that risk by focusing on those factors most closely linked to student success. (Kathy Christie, Barbara Thompson and Gary Whiteley, Education Commission of the States, January 2009)...

4/5/2007--ECS Launches Online Education Leadership Policy Toolkit, Funded by MetLife Foundation MS Word PDF...

Leadership: What policies and/or practices matter most? - Access related research titles from the ECS Research Studies Database. Links embedded in titles will take you to each study's major findings and recommendations....

Principals in the Pipeline - This article describes four key actions school districts must take to create a pipeline of high-quality principals: setting standards for school leaders, training future principals rigorously, hiring selectively and offering strong on-the-job support for novices. (Wallace Foundation, July 2012)...

Improving School Leadership Through Support, Evaluation, and Incentives: The Pittsburgh Principal Incentive Program - This research brief outlines key findings from the Pittsburgh Principal Incentive Program (PPIP). PPIP provides support, assistance, and performance-based evaluations and financial awards to principals tied to measures of leadership practices and student achievement growth. The authors found that the program changed principal behavior in ways aligned with program goals, and that student achievement growth exceeded that of the rest of the state in three out of four years since the beginning of the program, including increases in achievement growth for low-achieving students. (Rand Corporation, August 2012)...

Residency Program for School Leadership: Center for Reinventing Public Education Webinar - This presentation outlines the Achievement First (AF) Residency Program, a partnership between AF and traditional school districts in Connecticut to systematically train principals and assistant principals for district schools. The 3 key components of the residency program are: experiential residencies in AF and district partner schools; intense individual coaching for the entire year and first year of placement, and; weekly seminar-style learning and professional development. (New Haven School Change, Achievement First, and Hartford Public Schools, June 2012)...

Turnaround Brief: Successful Principals Speak Out - This brief provides feedback from a network of leading principals on what they need from their school districts to successfully turnaround low-performing schools. The network of principals is being developed by STG to exchange best practices, overcome obstacles, and bridge the gap between turnaround practitioners and policymakers. (Mass Insight Education’s School Turnaround Group, March 2012)...

Leadership Practices and School Choice - The study took a twofold approach to examine the leadership practices of school principals across school choice types and traditional public schools. First, researchers examined principal practices among school types in terms of challenges, role focus and time spent on core leadership tasks. Second, they probed the two types of charter school structures--independent and those affiliated with a management organization...

Building Early Learning Leaders: A Case Study - This case study describes how early learning advocates in New Jersey are partnering with the state department of education and the principals’ association to organize an annual four-day program called “PreK-3rd Leadership Training Series.” In 2009, about 200 district administrators participated. (Cynthia Rice and Vincent Costanza, Advocates for Children of New Jersey, March 2011)...

Investigating the Links to Improve Student Learning: Final Report of Research Findings - This study aims to identify the nature of successful educational leadership and to better understand how such leadership can improve educational practices and student learning. The first part of the report focuses on what school leaders do to improve student achievement; part two looks at how districts and district leaders foster school improvement and student learning; and part three examines state leadership and relationships with districts. (University of Minnesota, July 2010) ...

Principal Effectiveness and Leadership in an Era of Accountability: What Research Says - Recent work by Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) researchers has advanced our knowledge base on school leadership and specifically principal effectiveness, by drawing on longitudinal state data to estimate the effects of principals for different kinds of schools and students. This work sheds light on important issues related to school leadership and principal effectiveness, such as: (1) Evidence that the quality of a principal affects a range of school outcomes; (2) the school principal's job is complex and multifaceted; and (3) principals with the experience and skills needed to be effective are less likely to be working in high-poverty and low-achieving schools. (Jennifer King Rice, CALDER, April 2010)...

Leaders for California's Schools - This policy brief presents an overview of the current state of school leadership in California. The authors examine the challenges that the state must overcome to recruit, hire, train and retain strong and talented principals, with a particular focus on the limitations of current state and district policies. Loeb and Valant note that the state's principals are underpaid relative to their colleagues nationwide and many report feeling overworked, constrained by state policies and doubtful they will remain in the principalship until retirement. (PACE, September 2009)...

Assessing the Effectiveness of School Leaders: New Directions and New Processes - This Wallace Perspective describes the elements of a possible new direction in leader assessment—what should be assessed, and how. It highlights newly-developed assessment instruments that seek to apply those elements. And it discusses the potential, the challenges and the unknowns of using assessment as a key means of promoting not only better leader performance but also systemwide improvements that benefit children. (Wallace Foundation, March 2009)...