Principal Retention Strategies

This report documents broadly the research that addresses the prevalence of principal turnover, the factors associated with a principal’s decision to leave, the consequences of principal turnover for teaching and learning, and evidence-based strategies for improving principal retention.

This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).  It provides the following descriptive information on school principals by school type, student characteristics, and other relevant categories: number, race/ethnicity, age, gender, college degrees, salary, hours worked, focus of work, years experience, and tenure at current school.

This literature review aims to provide district leaders with an understanding of the research and best evidence regarding the components of effective principal talent management systems.

This report addresses the implementation of principal evaluation and related support as of 2015, viewing implementation in the context of districts’ aims, constraints, and capacity. Principal evaluation is part of the Wallace Principal Pipeline Initiative design, intended both as a means of assessing novice principals’ performance against clear standards and as a roadmap for tailoring professional development and one-on-one support to identified areas of need.

The objective of this study is to investigate and characterize principals' backgrounds, individual and school level factors associated with leadership stability, and principal career paths and exit behaviors in Missouri. 

Using statewide data from Missouri and Tennessee, we employ a difference-in-differences model with a matched comparison group to estimate arguably causal effects.

In order to inform discussions and decisions among policymakers, researchers, and parents, the 2008-09 Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS) was initiated as a nationally representative sample survey of public, private, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded (BIE) K-12 schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Districts usually implement principal performance pay systems at the urging of state policymakers or as part of grant-funded efforts. This briefing summarizes research about the efficacy of district approaches, describes state laws in place and offers three considerations for state policymaking.

This study examines the detrimental impact of principal turnover, including lower teacher retention and lower student achievement. Particularly hard hit are high poverty schools, which often lose principals at a higher rate as they transition to lower poverty, higher student achievement schools.

The Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary School Principals in the United States is a subsection of the NCES 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It provides descriptive statistics on K-12 school principals in areas such as: race, gender, education level, salary, experience, and working conditions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which there is a typology of principals who depart from their schools in the US using the 2007–2008 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2008–2009 Principal Follow-up Survey. Prior principal retention research has focused on identifying factors that predict principal turnover; however, this research has not focused on understanding the extent to which there may potentially be different subgroups of principals who depart. 

The Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement: A Systems Framework (PDF) is a research-based approach to school turnaround — proven to help states, districts, and schools in effectively leading and managing rapid improvement efforts.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the factors influencing school systems’ decisions behind crafting, developing, and revising differentiated pay plans that require districts to abandon the practice of providing only across-the-board salary increases for experience and advanced degrees by adding at least one additional criterion for compensating educators.

This briefing paper addresses the essential competencies and actions of the turnaround principal.

This report consists of two parts: a survey of 67 public school systems district staff serving as principal supervisors and on-site analysis of six districts pre-service training and support systems for new principals.

In particular, this paper investigates the extent to which the labor market for school principals may act as a mechanism for providing such incentives.

This report recommends an accountability approach that focuses on meaningful learning, enabled by professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by adequate and appropriate resources, so that all students regardless of background are prepared for both college and career when they graduate from high school.

This report is the second in an IERC series on public school principals in Illinois. This study focuses on principals’ movements during the same period, thereby providing recent information on principal retention and turnover during a time marked by increasing school accountability and public scrutiny of principal effectiveness

This study examined the conditions and concerns of principals in Virginia to see what their experiences and perceptions are of the growing shortage in the principalship. Findings suggest that principals do not feel that they have sufficient authority and resources to get the job done and that they are working long hours to fill the gap.

This report documents broadly the research that addresses the prevalence of principal turnover, the factors associated with a principal’s decision to leave, the consequences of principal turnover for teaching and learning, and evidence-based strategies for improving principal retention.

This brief explores why principal turnover matters and how the effects of this issue are borne out in schools. Specific policy recommendations based on research and aimed at reducing principal turnover are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to present qualitative evidence on the processes and forces that shape school administrator career paths.

This chapter reviews the theory of school-based accountability, describes variations across programs and identifies key features influencing the effectiveness and possible unintended consequences of accountability policies. 

This report presents information garnered from a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative
justice1 in U.S. schools. The purpose of this review is to capture key issues, describe models of
restorative justice, and summarize results from studies conducted in the field.

This chapter analyzes 2011 survey data from a sample of Texas principals who were asked about their perceptions of their working conditions such as: Support and facilities; salary; resources; autonomy to make decisions; testing and accountability pressures; and relationships with supervisors. 

This article reviews the research and best practices on succession planning in education as well as in other sectors. The authors illustrate how forward-thinking superintendents can partner with universities and other organizations to address the leadership challenges they face by creating strategic, long-term, leadership growth plans that build leadership capacity and potentially yield significant returns in improved student outcomes.

This paper uses administrative data from two states covering the school years 1987–1988 to
2000–2001 to examine principal turnover and mobility.

The role of today's principal is changing, as is the principal workforce. The new generation of principals is younger with less teaching experience, and is more mobile, working more hours, and experiencing more job stress. Understanding how to better prepare new leaders for the role of principal is an urgent policy concern.

This study presents a comprehensive, descriptive analysis of the inequitable distribution of both input and output measures of teacher quality across various indicators of student disadvantage across all school districts in Washington State. 

This report presents analyses of data from semistructured interviews with central office personnel, principal supervisors, and principals, as well as data from surveys of supervisors and principals in each of the six PSI districts.

This report describes the ongoing development and implementation of the SAM® process, which has the goal of increasing the capacity of principals to use time in instructionally focused ways while decreasing time on management tasks. 

The Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS), first conducted in school year 2008-09, is a component of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The 2012-13 PFS was administered in order to provide attrition rates for principals in K-12 public and private schools. The goal was to assess how many principals in the 2011-12 school year still worked as a principal in the same school in the 2012-13 school year, how many had moved to become a principal in another school, and how many had left the principalship.

This report presents selected findings from the Public School Principal Status Data File of the 2016–17 Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS). The PFS is a nationally representative sample survey of public1 K–12 schools in the 50 states and District of Columbia and was initiated to inform discussions and decisions regarding principal attrition and mobility among policymakers, researchers, and parents.

Using multiple measures of teacher and principal effectiveness, the authors document that indeed more effective principals see lower rates of teacher turnover, on average

This study investigate the association between principal effectiveness and principal turnover using longitudinal data from Tennessee, a state that has invested in multiple measures of principal performance through its educator evaluation system.

Numerous studies investigate high-stakes personnel evaluation systems in education, but nearly all focus on evaluation of teachers. The authors instead examine the evaluation of school principals at scale using data from the first 4 years of implementation of Tennessee’s multiple-measure administrator evaluation system. 

this article identifies multiple conceptual approaches for capturing the contributions of principals to student test score growth, develops empirical models to reflect these approaches, examines the properties of these models, and compares the results of the models empirically using data from a large urban school district.

This article seeks to provide a comprehensive and detailed picture of reliability results. More specifically, the authors present a meta-analysis of reliability results derived from 52 data sets derived from 43 independent empirical studies in which the PIMRS had been employed for data collection.

The RAND Corporation served as the evaluator of PPIP and examined implementation and outcomes from school years 2007–2008 through 2010–2011. Although the district is likely to continue implementing much of what constitutes PPIP, this report focuses only on the period during which PPIP was being funded by the TIF grant.

How to bring schools from the brink of doom to stellar success.

Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a turnover is confounded with unobserved school-level factors. We employ a novel identification strategy that blocks each potential source of endogeneity to isolate plausibly causal effects of within- and between-year principal turnover.

This report describes the opportunities for supporting school leadership under ESSA, discusses the standards of evidence under ESSA, and synthesizes the research base with respect to those standards.

This report provides descriptive information on traditional public, charter, and private school principals over the period of 1987-88 through 2011-12. It includes comparative data on number of principals, gender, race/ethnicity, age, advance degrees, principal experience, teaching experience, salaries, hours worked, focus of work, experience and tenure at current schools, etc.

New “autonomy initiatives” aim to increase schools’ decision-making authority as a strategy to leverage school improvement. These policies build on lessons of previous reforms such as site-based management in ways that bode well for their success. However, how are these policies actually faring in implementation? The authors addressed that question with a comprehensive research review.

In this study the authors use longitudinal data from one large school district – Miami-Dade County Public Schools, to investigate the distribution of principals across schools.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the relationship between principal effectiveness (which we capture with a principal quality measure) and turnover. Specifically, we assess whether higher quality principals are more or less likely to leave their schools in New York City (NYC) as well as at the national level.

This study uses a randomized design to assess the impact of the Balanced Leadership program on principal leadership, instructional climate, principal efficacy, staff turnover, and student achievement in a sample of rural northern Michigan schools.

To understand why excessive turnover exists, researchers have investigated the relationship between principal turnover and various features of the principalship; which principals are most likely to leave; and which schools are more vulnerable to principal turnover

This article presents results from a study of leadership coaches who worked with novice principals in a university-based induction program for a 3-year period.

This report provides descriptive information about retention, attrition, and mobility among teachers and administrators that can be used to inform policy and program decisionmaking in West Virginia.

The authors use longitudinal data from one large school district to investigate the distribution of principals across schools. They find that schools serving many low-income, non-White, and low-achieving students have principals who have less experience and less education and who attended less selective colleges. This distribution of principals is partially driven by the initial match of first-time principals to schools, and it is exacerbated by systematic attrition and transfer away from these schools.

Building on the analysis that was first reported in School Leadership That Works, the authors of Balanced Leadership identify the 21 responsibilities associated with effective leadership and show how they relate to three overarching responsibilities

This article presents the results of research into the impact of principal turnover on schools, and the ability of schools to mitigate the negative effects of frequent turnover by distributing leadership in the schools. 

This chapter looks to the experience of the private sector for lessons on how to improve principal’s leadership and management performance.

Using twelve years of administrative data from North Carolina public schools, this paper explores the relationship between principal turnover and student achievement. 

This study investigates the effect of NCLB sanctions on principals’ working conditions, job stress, and turnover behaviors using a nationally representative sample of principals and detailed school-level assessment/AYP data systematically collected from each state education agency.

To highlight principal shortage trends, examine school leader recruitment issues, and offer policy recommendations for improving school leader recruitment efforts at the federal, state, and local level.

In discussions to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and other federal initiatives such as Race to the Top and the ESEA flexibility waivers, legislators have focused on the impact educators have on improving student achievement

Informed by literature on labor market and school choice, this study aims to examine the dynamics of principal career movements in charter schools by comparing principal turnover rates and patterns between charter schools and traditional public schools.

Using the collective leadership framework, this study examines (a) how principals perceive their own influence and that of other key stakeholders in various school decisions and (b) how principals’ perceived influences of other stakeholders are associated with their own influence.

School leaders are increasingly being asked, whether by rhetoric or policy, to measurably improve student achievement. The resultant need to assist school leaders in their ability to improve teaching and learning for all students in their schools led to the establishment of the National Institute of School Leadership's (NISL's) Executive Development Program. 

This study examined the impact of EDP on student achievement in Pennsylvania schools
from 2006-2010. It updates and extends a prior evaluation (Nunnery, Ross, & Yen, 2010a) study
of this same cohort from 2006-2009.

This report presents findings of a study conducted in the fall of 1994 by the Department of Research, Evaluation, and Planning of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Researchers examined demographic data on CPS principals from personnel records, analyzed results of a 1992 survey of Chicago principals, and constructed an administrative history of all schools since 1987-88

This study uses multivariate analysis of a large panel dataset to examine the determinants of principal retention (and, thus, the determinants of attracting a principal away from her current position)

This article examines the unique features of the rural school context and how these features are associated with the stability of principals in these schools

This article examines the salary trajectory of teachers as they move up the career ladder into leadership positions.

REL Midwest conducted a study on the mobility of teachers and administrators in public schools within and between Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The study was supported by representatives of the state education agency in each state. This study is the first to examine educator mobility using the same methodology across these three states.

The purpose of this review is to take stock of what we have learned about the sources and consequences of principal turnover, and to identify what gaps remain.

This paper examines research on what we know about the causes and impact of principal turnover.

This paper provides evidence on how school leaders used their new autonomy and its impact on school performance. 

This paper predicts high school graduation and dropout for at-risk students in one of the largest school districts in the United States using the 2007-2010 Florida high school graduation cohort.

To contribute to the limited empirical literature on the principal labor market, this study explores the reasons for the disparity of turnover rates between charter school principals and their counterparts in traditional public schools (TPSs).

The Wallace Foundation, which invested tens of millions of dollars into strengthening the ranks of school leaders in those districts, is trying to answer that question. Over the next several months, the foundation will take the knowledge and lessons learned in its “principal pipeline” districts to 90 more school systems in 31 states.

Effective preparation and professional development programs build the capacity of principals to lead across their full range of responsibilities, fostering school environments where adults and students thrive. Research points to several key building blocks of strong preparation and development programs. 

The National Teacher and Principal Survey is completed every four years soliciting descriptive information from principals and teachers across the 50 states. A few highlights include: Sixty percent of school principals have been at their schools for three years or less. 

Despite a growing body of turnover literature, much remains unknown about the factors predicting career transitional behaviors of school principals. To bridge this gap, we examined variations in principal, school, and district characteristics influencing administrator leaver and mover behaviors, using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling. 

Despite concerns about turnover among administrators, conditions that influence career longevity intentions of school principals are less known. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a three-level Generalized Multilevel Model to estimate variations in school and district characteristics impacting principals’ career departure and mobility intentions, based on data from the School and Staffing Survey.

This study examines whether principals' movements and school achievement are associated with their salaries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the costs of replacing high school principals. 

The third in a series of reports evaluating a multi-year Wallace initiative documents ways in which six districts are working to improve school leadership districtwide. 

The authors measure the impact of replacing these principals on school-wide student achievement by measuring the changes in achievement that occurred when principals were replaced, and comparing these changes to achievement in comparison schools within DCPS that kept the same principal

During the past two decades, principal turnover issues have raised nationwide concerns about leadership stability and student performance. With national data from National Center for Education Statistics, this study examines how principal working conditions influence the probability of different types of principal turnover (mover, promoted, demoted, leaver, and retired).

The Education Commission of the States was created by states in order to track state policy trends, translate academic research, provide unbiased advice and create opportunities for state leaders to learn from one another.