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Principal turnover and student achievement
Abstract
Principals have important management roles, including responsibilities for teachers, curricula and budgets. Schools change principals frequently; about 20% of public school principals in the United States leave their positions each year. Despite the significance of principals and the regularity of principal departures, little is known about how turnover affects schools. Using twelve years of administrative data from North Carolina public schools, this paper explores the relationship between principal turnover and student achievement. Principal departures follow a downturn in student performance. Achievement continues to fall in the two years following the installation of a new principal and then rises over the next three years. Five years after a new principal is installed, average academic performance is no different than it was five years before the new principal took over. Increases in student achievement following a principal transition may reflect mean reversion rather than a positive effect of principal turnover.
... Många av de studier som refereras i dessa översikter har fokuserat på rörlighetens orsaker (t.ex. Béteille et al., 2012;Loeb et al., 2010;Miller, 2013;Ronfeldt et al., 2013) i olika kontexter, och ett brett spektrum av faktorer med bäring på frågan om varför rektorer byter arbetsplats har framkommit genom sådan forskning. Dessa faktorer har av Rangel (2018) delats in i fyra huvudgrupper. ...
... På skolnivå är rektorsrörligheten ofta förknippad med sjunkande elevprestationer (t.ex. Bartanen et al., 2019;Béteille et al., 2012;Mascall & Leithwood, 2010;Miller, 2013), och störningar i pågående undervisnings-och skolutvecklingsprocesser (Pietsch et al., 2020;Wills, 2016). På huvudmannanivå handlar det främst om de ökade kostnader som uppkommer när nya rektorer ska anställas och utbildas (Gates et al., 2006;Superville, 2014). ...
... Här menar vi att behovet av ytterligare forskning är skriande stort. Utgångspunkten för den forskning som efterlyses kan med fördel tas i redan befintlig internationellt producerad kunskap, vilken bland annat har påvisat negativa effekter på elevers prestationer (Bartanen et al., 2019;Béteille et al., 2012;Mascall & Leithwood, 2010;Miller, 2013. Se även Donley et al., 2020Rangel, 2018), och pågående utvecklingsprocesser (Pietsch et al., 2020;Wills, 2016). ...
What do we know about principal turnover in Sweden? The purpose of this article is to map and describe the current state of knowledge related to principal turnover in Sweden. The review covers literature published by researchers and Swedish authorities during the past decade, and is structured thematically to answer three questions: 1) What is the level of principal turnover in Sweden? 2) What are the causes of principal turnover in Sweden? 3) What are the consequences, and strategies used for dealing with principal turnover in Sweden? Based on the results it is concluded that the state of knowledge relevant to this area of concern is remarkably weak.
... The question of how to support teachers so that they can thrive and succeed, especially in having difficulties in hiring under-resourced schools, is a conundrum. The school conditions associated with hard to staff often exacerbated the problem with not only higher levels of repeated teacher turnover (Tran & Smith, 2020), but also principal turnover (Snodgrass Rangel, 2018), and both have been linked to each other (Buckman, 2022;Jacob et al., 2015) and to lower student academic performance (especially for underrepresented students, such as students of color) (Bartanen et al., 2019;Miller, 2009;Ronfeldt et al., 2013). The effects of the repeated turnover and instability creates an environment that is difficult to sustain positive change efforts. ...
... However, from a system's perspective, a complicated web of processes undergirds the linking of those mechanisms. For instance, the improvement of teacher retention is predicted to not only influence school academic outcomes, due to factors such as consistency of instructional direction from a stable faculty body (Miller, 2009;Ronfeldt et al., 2013); but also the improvement of school academic outcomes will also have a reciprocal effect on teacher retention; schools with higher performing students are considered as more attractive workplaces (Bartanen et al., 2019). These processes were discussed in more detail earlier in the paper and are graphically displayed in Figure 2. ...
... The problems are exacerbated for impoverished high-needs (high poverty and minority) schools (Tran & Dou, 2019), who often underperform and face more severe educator (i.e., teachers and principals) shortages than their non high-needs counterparts. The pressure of the school leadership position often results in increased principal turnover, which by itself is relate to increased teacher turnover (Buckman, 2022;Jacob et al., 2015;Miller, 2013). Despite this, research has suggested that effective professional development has the potential to improve schools' learning outcomes (Jacob et al., 2015;Player & Katz, 2016), as well as improve teacher and principal retention (Jacob et al., 2015). ...
Theories of distributed leadership suggest that organizational learning and change results not from the efforts of a single individual, but rather from a network of people working within their broader systems. Team empowering leadership enhances human resources development of the organization to promote the sharing of knowledge that is necessary for change. In this study, we study transformational and distributed leadership team that have been linked to improving working conditions and students' learning in high-needs schools. Specifically, we highlight a team-based intervention where positive organizational improvements were made to academically struggling schools, and then qualitatively examined the associated processes to understand what enabled the occurrence of those positive changes. We find that the team structure allowed for the clarification of expectations, enhancement of communication, and improvement of educator working conditions through professional development support and distribution of leadership responsibility, which ultimately resulted in improvement in school culture and performance.
... The learning Policy Institute conducted a survey to measure and study principal turnover, and through its research, found that the "national average tenure of principals in their schools was four years as of 2016-2017" with "35 percent of principals being at their school for less than two years" (Bradley & Levin, 2019, p. 3). Continuity of leadership is important for the academic, social, and emotional health of schools (Farley-Ripple, Solano, & McDuffie, 2012;Meyer, Macmillan, & Northfield, 2009;Miller, 2013) as principals have a direct and often powerful impact of the climate of a school. A lack of continuity in leadership, therefore, has an impact on students, staff, and community, the implications of which require further study. ...
... 357). Research has shown that when schools experience a change in leadership, they also experience an impact on the climate of the school, student achievement, and teacher retention (Henry & Harbatkin, 2019;Miller, 2013). Understanding the impact of this change can help schools plan for these transitions, predict the impact of leadership change, and mitigate the negative impacts of sudden shifts of practice, policy, or consistency. ...
... Principals are expected to be instructional leaders, disciplinarians, public envoys to the community, representatives of the school, and morale builders for staff and students. Research has shown that the principal has an impact on student achievement (Hallinger, Bickman, & Davis, 1996;Miller, 2013;Nettles & Herrington, 2007;Ross & Gray, 2006). Research also shows that the principal directly affects the work environment of a school (Meyer, Macmillan, & Northfield, 2009), including influencing staff decisions on whether to remain at the school or seek employment elsewhere. ...
School climate affects student achievement, feelings of safety within the school, and teacher job satisfaction. Concurrently, the principal is often seen as someone with a direct influence on the climate of the school, and therefore someone who has a direct role in shaping these aspects of school climate. Recent data suggests that about one in five principals leaves the profession every year, which means that every year, one in every five schools experiences a change to its climate, and a change to its achievement, safety, and teacher satisfaction. If this trend continues, schools are going to continue to feel the effects of inconsistency in the principalship. Through studying the effect of leadership change on school climate, we can better understand the ways in which climate is impacted by frequent changes in the principalship. Additionally, aspiring principals can learn a lot about the potential impact of their entrance into a school, and thus prepare for a successful transition into their new school and their new profession. Lastly, if administrators are prepared for the change in climate, hopefully they will have more success staying as the principal during those first challenging years.
... Negative results could accrue from a feeling of instability within a school after principal turnover (Béteille et al., 2012;Ni et al., 2015). Not only are new principals less familiar with the student populations, teachers, and the school communities (Miller, 2013), they are also unfamiliar with the school climate and culture altogether . Given these feelings of instability, higher than usual staff turnover could result, followed by decreased school performance Eberts & Stone, 1988;Miller, 2013). ...
... Not only are new principals less familiar with the student populations, teachers, and the school communities (Miller, 2013), they are also unfamiliar with the school climate and culture altogether . Given these feelings of instability, higher than usual staff turnover could result, followed by decreased school performance Eberts & Stone, 1988;Miller, 2013). Frequent change could also be deleterious. ...
... Frequent change could also be deleterious. A constant churn of principals could make it difficult for schools to implement consistent policies and programs and to commit to improvement Miller, 2013;Miskel & Cosgrove, 1985), particularly since it can take up to seven years to see positive school reform and increases in student achievement Coelli & Green, 2012;Miller, 2013;Tran, 2017). ...
This study asks: What is the relationship between principal turnover and school performance? We use data on all Colorado public schools for the years 2013 and 2018 to examine the relationship between turnover and school performance. Analyses included difference-in-difference and ordinary least squares regression after first differencing. Results indicated almost 50% of schools experienced principal turnover. The number of turnover events ranged from zero to three. Results showed no significant differences in school performance based on turnover status or number of leadership changes.
... The working conditions of principals are associated to both challenges (Lee & Mao, 2023;Sun & Ni, 2016;Tekleselassie & Villarreal lll, 2011). The principal turnover can negatively influence the whole school community (Bartanen et al., 2019;Béteille et al., 2012;Miller, 2013). ...
... Some of our respondents openly talked about such intentions or reported that they had previously worked in a school with poor indoor-air and ended up changing the school. The principal turnover can have negative effects on the school community (Bartanen et al., 2019;Béteille et al., 2012;Miller, 2013). Therefore, principals must receive sufficient support from various authorities, their workload must be shared, and above all the buildings must be well maintained so that these problems can be prevented in advance. ...
The environmental suffering of contaminated communities has been analysed in depth. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the environmental suffering of such communities’ leaders. Our study aimed to shed light on this issue through interviews with 20 principals working in schools with poor indoor-air quality in Finland. Based on reflexive thematical analysis, we identified three themes: (1) being burdened and powerless; (2) being on a knife-edge; (3) being worried in the face of the unknown. These themes were organised by three interpenetrating key factors: power, uncertainty, and responsibility. Although our principals shared the same experiences as members of contaminated communities in general, their environmental suffering also differed from those. Altogether, leading a school with poor indoor-air quality was a highly burdensome and stressful task. Research so far has mainly concentrated on contaminated communities in contexts of large-scale technological hazards and disasters. Researchers should pay closer attention to the everyday environmental suffering in schools and other workplaces and especially to their leaders since leaders play important roles in supporting well-being of followers in environments that are perceived as a threat.
... While there is a strong consensus that teachers are the most important school-factor influencing student achievement, research has consistently demonstrated that principals are the second most influential schoollevel factor effecting student outcomes (Dhuey & Smith, 2014;Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008;Leithwood & Jantzi, 2008). Thus, each time a principal leaves a school, research has shown it can take several years to reconstruct the organizational and social components necessary to support student achievement and growth (Coelli & Green, 2012;Miller, 2013). Furthermore, the rate of leadership churn can be nearly twice as high in schools with greater proportions of students living in poverty and students of color, disproportionately affecting the students most impacted by leadership instability (Rangel, 2017). ...
... However, results also show that schools utilizing internal hires tend not to be those that are struggling academically. Given that principal turnover has shown to influence student achievement (Miller, 2013), further development of "grow your own" programs or internal promotion may additionally serve as a strategy to help support those schools that experience the highest levels of leadership turnover, including lower achieving schools, those with high percentages of economically disadvantaged students, and those with high proportions of students of color. ...
... As their tenure at a school increases, principals become increasingly more effective at improving student achievement-a condition lost with each transition (Bartanen, 2019). Overall, high leadership churn has negative consequences on students and teachers , as building the organizational and social components necessary to support student achievement and growth can take several years (Coelli & Green, 2012;Miller, 2013) and can trigger downstream turnover of other staff (Béteille et al., 2011;Felps et al., 2009). ...
... However, if salaries are considered an indicator of employee quality, then these low-salary employees would also be less likely to be hired elsewhere (immobile), making salary a diverging force on principal transitions (Becker & Huselid, 1992;Lazear & Rosen, 1981). Conceptually, while a certain amount of leadership mobility can be positive (Virany et al., 1992) and may result in improved principal-school fit (Farley-Ripple, Raffel, et al., 2012), in general, principal turnover has shown to have detrimental impacts on teachers and students Miller, 2013). As such, while mobility may in some ways be positive for principals themselves and may certainly be needed in certain situations, teachers and students have generally shown to be better served in schools with stable leadership. ...
Utilizing a dataset that includes more than 17,000 principals over 17 years, we employ discrete time hazard modeling and heckit regressions to identify characteristics that simultaneously explain principal turnover and selection. We then construct a framework comparing the two dimensions of stability and mobility to identify how features such as race and student achievement can help explain sites of frequent principal turnover risk. We find certain characteristics—such as experience with low performing schools—combine to increase the likelihood of both turnover and selection, while other characteristics—such as salary—increase stability but reduce mobility. Results demonstrate which combinations of features may explain higher likelihood of frequent turnover, and further help to identify systematic trends in principal hiring to better understand where policy interventions may be leveraged.
... Scholars recognize teacher retention as a cost-efficient strategy that protects the organization against the negative impact of large annual turnover rates and have thus identified principal hiring decisions, specifically hiring teachers, as essential to a school's success (Miller, 2013). Yet, much of the extant research on teacher turnover addresses the Building experience and retention ...
... Snodgrass Rangel, 2018), including that it is likely to increase teacher turnover (e.g. Bartanen et al., 2019;Beteille et al., 2012;Miller, 2013). Teacher turnover tends to have negative effects on student achievement (Ronfeldt et al., 2013). ...
Purpose
Hiring teachers is among principals' most critical work but what remains uncertain is the relationship between a principal's tenure in a school and the rate at which they hire teachers who will stay. Teacher retention and principal experience are key predictors of school stability. This study therefore investigates the influence of principal tenure on the retention rates of teachers they hire over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors followed 11,717 Texas principals from 1999 to 2017, and tracked the teachers they hired in each year of their tenure in a school to see if principals became more effective at hiring teachers who stay over time. The authors use regression with fixed effects and find that the longer a principal stayed in a school, the more effective they were at hiring teachers who stay to both three- and five-year benchmarks.
Findings
Principals hire significantly more teachers who persist after they have led their first school for five or more years; however, the average principal in Texas leaves a school after four years thus never realizing those gains. The authors' second main finding indicates that principals who enter an unstable school (less than 69% retention in the two years prior to the principal's arrival) and stay at least five consecutive years, can counteract prior instability.
Originality/value
This study provides initial evidence that principals establish a great deal of building-specific situational expertise that is not easily portable or applicable in a subsequent school placement.
... Thus, the departure of a principal can have severe consequences for a school. Studies have shown that principal turnover has several adverse effects, including but not limited to decreased student achievement (Branch et al., 2009;Burkhauser et al., 2012;Kearney et al., 2012;Mascall & Leithwood, 2010), poor school climate and culture (Hanselman et al., 2016;Noonan & Goldman, 1995), lower graduation rates (Weinstein et al., 2009), the financial costs of principal replacement (Tran et al., 2018), and teacher turnover (Bétille et al., 2012;Miller, 2013;Ronfeldt et al., 2013). The principal retention research has also linked principal stability to student achievement (see: Akiba & Reichardt, 2004;Branch et al., 2009;Fuller & Young, 2009;Miller, 2009;Vanderhaar et al., 2006). ...
... Henry and Harbatkin (2019) assert that principal turnover due to voluntary departures is associated with an increase of 1.7 percentage points in teacher turnover. Finally, Miller (2013) examined the impact of teacher turnover on student achievement and its association with principal turnover and found a 1.3% (b = -1.221) increase in teacher turnover in the year preceding a principal's departure. ...
This article investigates the critical influence principals have on mitigating or exacerbating teacher turnover. Both South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) data and National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) from Academic Years 2016 to 2020 were used to analyze the research question. A Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) mixed-effects multiple regression model determined that there was a statistically significant relationship between principal turnover and teacher turnover (p ≤ 0.01; b=-1.079) as well as Principal retention and teacher turnover (p≤ 0.001; b=0.169). The article provides evidence that retaining principals and reducing principal turnover can significantly reduce teacher turnover.
... al., 2020). School personnel working in low wealth, high needs schools face unique stressors due to funding inequities (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012), high teacher and administrator turnover (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017;Miller, 2013;Ronfeldt et al., 2013;Shernoff et al., 2016), and the negative impact of institutional racism on students and teachers (Bottiani et al., 2019;Merolla & Jackson, 2019;Reskin, 2012). Teacher stress and resultant burnout can weaken teacher commitment and investment in teaching with studies highlighting a negative relationship between teacher stress and student outcomes (Arens & Morin, 2016;Hoglund et al., 2015;McLean & Connor, 2015). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges for school communities with long term impacts still unknown. School personnel working in high need, low wealth schools are uniquely at risk for pandemic-related stress given extensive changes to their work life and concerns regarding student trauma exposure. We delivered DBT skills training to 39 school personnel (89% female, mean years of experience was 18.49 [SD = 7.88]). Close to 20% of the sample reported moderate-to-severe anxiety, depression, and stress and substantial impact of COVID-19 on loved ones. Multilevel regressions indicated significant decreases in stress between the 1st-2nd sessions attended (p = .004), and the 3rd-6th sessions attended (p = .04). Sessions 7-8 were not associated with significant decreases in stress (p = .51). Study limitations, implications, and conclusions are discussed.
... From this, we can infer that the challenges of the workplace can be sustained in a positive manner. Since research has shown that job satisfaction directly correlates with reducing principal turnover (Snodgrass, 2018), and principal stability links to better performance for children (Liebowitz & Porter, 2019;Miller, 2013), the Argentinian practices to manage stress and boost job satisfaction can be an equity lever to close the gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged schools. ...
Background paper prepared for the 2024/5 Global Education Monitoring Report: leadership in education
... In some instances, shuffling principals has been used as a strategy for addressing issues at low-performing schools (Russell, 2009) and staving off administrator complacency (Harper, 2017). While this is an important consideration, most existing literature still indicates that administrative turnover is generally followed by lower school performance (e.g., Béteille et al., 2012;Henry & Harbatkin, 2019;Miller, 2013). The rate of "principal churn" (DeMatthews et al., 2022, p. 100) tends to be highest at the lowestperforming schools (Fuller & Young, 2009;Levin & Bradley, 2019), indicating further problems with this strategy. ...
Each year, SC TEACHER publishes different workforce profiles, sharing details and demographics around South Carolina educators for a better understanding of our public school workforce. Among these publications, this report is the first to examine the state’s school administrator workforce.
... Por exemplo, a capacidade do gestor escolar em gerir a unidade educacional, por meio de formação acadêmica voltada à gestão, é um elemento importante para a qualidade de gestão (Tavares, 2015). Além disso, outros fatores podem contribuir para a qualidade da gestão escolar, como a experiência dos diretores (Béteille, Kalogrides e Loeb, 2011), sua rotatividade (Miller, 2013) (2010) investigaram os efeitos de um programa de melhoria escolar implementado em escolas de baixo desempenho na Jamaica e verificaram que os alunos das escolas tratadas não obtiveram melhores índices em matemática e leitura. No Brasil, Tavares (2015) verificou os efeitos positivos e significativos de um programa-piloto, o Programa de Gestão Escolar por Resultados (PGER), no desempenho dos alunos na proficiência de matemática na 8 a série, principalmente em alunos com maior dificuldade de aprendizagem. ...
O Plano de Desenvolvimento da Escola (PDE-Escola) do Ministério da Educação (MEC) tem como propósito a melhoria da qualidade do ensino e na gestão escolar, priorizando as escolas públicas do ensino fundamental com indicadores menores que a média nacional – por meio do Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb) do Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep) do MEC. Este artigo objetiva avaliar os efeitos desse programa nos escores dos testes de matemática e língua portuguesa da Prova Brasil, no período 2009-2015, das escolas beneficiadas, por meio de regressão descontínua (regression discontinuity design – RDD). Os resultados indicam que o programa não teve efeito satisfatório no desempenho dos alunos pertencentes às escolas tratadas. Em geral, não foram encontrados efeitos significativos nas proficiências de português e matemática. Também foram observados efeitos heterogêneos por nível de proficiência e nível de experiência dos diretores. Em função desses resultados, pode-se inferir que as práticas de gestão escolar, introduzidas pelo PDE-Escola, não causaram melhoria nos resultados escolares dos discentes.
... Por exemplo, a capacidade do gestor escolar em gerir a unidade educacional, por meio de formação acadêmica voltada à gestão, é um elemento importante para a qualidade de gestão (Tavares, 2015). Além disso, outros fatores podem contribuir para a qualidade da gestão escolar, como a experiência dos diretores (Béteille, Kalogrides e Loeb, 2011), sua rotatividade (Miller, 2013) (2010) investigaram os efeitos de um programa de melhoria escolar implementado em escolas de baixo desempenho na Jamaica e verificaram que os alunos das escolas tratadas não obtiveram melhores índices em matemática e leitura. No Brasil, Tavares (2015) verificou os efeitos positivos e significativos de um programa-piloto, o Programa de Gestão Escolar por Resultados (PGER), no desempenho dos alunos na proficiência de matemática na 8 a série, principalmente em alunos com maior dificuldade de aprendizagem. ...
O Plano de Desenvolvimento da Escola (PDE-Escola) do Ministério da Educação (MEC) tem como propósito a melhoria da qualidade do ensino e na gestão escolar, priorizando as escolas públicas do ensino fundamental com indicadores menores que a média nacional – por meio do Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb) do Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep) do MEC. Este artigo objetiva avaliar os efeitos desse programa nos escores dos testes de matemática e língua portuguesa da Prova Brasil, no período 2009-2015, das escolas beneficiadas, por meio de regressão descontínua (regression discontinuity design – RDD). Os resultados indicam que o programa não teve efeito satisfatório no desempenho dos alunos pertencentes às escolas tratadas. Em geral, não foram encontrados efeitos significativos nas proficiências de português e matemática. Também foram observados efeitos heterogêneos por nível de proficiência e nível de experiência dos diretores. Em função desses resultados, pode-se inferir que as práticas de gestão escolar, introduzidas pelo PDE-Escola, não causaram melhoria nos resultados escolares dos discentes.
... Una alta tasa de rotación de directores y directoras es probable que interrumpa los procesos de mejoramiento y la cultura institucional de las escuelas y fuerzan el ajuste de sus metas, políticas y cultura organizacional. La evidencia existente, da cuenta que rotaciones frecuentes en el liderazgo escolar trae impactos negativos y significativos en el aprendizaje de los y las estudiantes (Miller, 2013). Estos efectos negativos son mayores en establecimientos de menor nivel socioeconómico y bajo desempeño académico, los que tienen mayores dificultades para atraer y retener directores y directoras efectivas y experimentadas (Béteille et al., 2012;Wills, 2016). ...
Esta nota técnica da cuenta de los principales hallazgos sobre las trayectorias de los directores y directoras en Chile en los últimos años a partir de varios estudios de los autores.
... Most studies on principal succession focus on the causes for the change and very few examine the consequences and impact of this process (Snodgrass Rangel 2018). Nevertheless, recent studies suggest two areas with the potential to suffer from a change of principal: student achievement and school culture (Bartanen, Grissom, and Rogers 2019;Béteille, Kalogrides, and Loeb 2012;Burkhauser et al. 2012;Miller 2013). Whether dictated by policy or through other circumstances, high principal turnover can also impact considerably on staff and school culture (Meyer et al. 2011), having the potential to change school culture negatively affect teacher and school morale. ...
... However, the turnover rates in the education sector remain significant, with approximately 30% turnover among recent recruits and 20-30% after the fifth year (Pamu, 2010). Miller (2013) reported an annual turnover rate of about 20% for public academicians in the United States. This persistent turnover has become customary. ...
The objective of this study is to examine the mediating effect of affective commitment on the association between procedural justice and academicians' turnover intention. The existing body of literature seems to have neglected the potential influence of affective commitment as a mediator in the relationship between procedural justice and academics' intention to leave their positions in higher education institutions. Consequently, this study emerges as a prominent investigation in its field, examining the relationship between procedural justice and turnover intention among academics, through the mediation of affective commitment. A total of 238 participants, consisting of academicians (lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor) from the five highest-ranked private universities in Bangladesh, were included in the data collection process using stratified random sampling technique. The PLS-SEM was utilized in order to examine and analyze the proposed hypotheses. The analysis revealed that procedural justice has a negative relationship with academicians' turnover intention and a significantly positive association with affective commitment. Additionally, the findings of the study indicate that the relationship between procedural justice and academicians' turnover intention is mediated by affective commitment. This study offers essential recommendations for organizations to improve affective commitment by promoting procedural justice, thereby mitigating the turnover intention among highly skilled academicians. Hence, the utilization of the research outputs could potentially result in improved employee outcomes and enhanced organizational productivity.
... leaving the role or profession before retirement age) is an important issue that needs to be addressed more explicitly in policy and research. Previous research has shown that principal or headteacher turnover holds negative consequences for student achievement (Miller, 2013) and that it results in higher levels of teacher turnover . Rates of turnover are higher in more complex school communities, and the effects of turnover are more pronounced in these communities (Béteille et al., 2012). ...
Attention is being paid by researchers and policymakers globally to the problem of principal burnout and attrition, caused by rising workloads and stressful conditions. This paper identifies several possible mitigating strategies or practices, drawing on lessons learnt from former school principals about their professional experiences. The paper draws upon a case study of principal attraction and retention in Australia, focusing particularly on survey results from a subset of 56 Australian former school principals. The analysis is theorised through turnover theory, specifically with a lens on the push factors that influenced principals’ turnover and attrition. Our analysis shows that principals left the profession due to a perceived lack of support, complexity of the role and overwhelming workload. These are identified as priorities for new policies and practices that better support principals working in an increasingly challenging profession. The paper provides an original contribution to the field through its specific focus on retention and former principals’ perspectives. While the paper is focused on Australian principals, their experiences can provide insights into wider patterns being seen in countries with pressurised workloads, increasingly poor principal health and well-being, and subsequent concerns about the attraction and retention of school leaders.
... The challenges of the role can lead to burnout, especially through the experience of emotional exhaustion and decreased feelings of personal accomplishment (DeMatthews et al., 2021;Gmelch & Gates, 1998). When administrators start to burn out, not only are they personally affected, but cascading effects can impact the students, teachers, and other staff members who rely on them (Meyer et al., 2020;Miller, 2013). When this burnout results in leadership turnover, the whole school can be affected (Bartanen et al., 2019). ...
Objectives
This research investigated how school and district leaders perceive and respond to an adapted version of the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) program, implemented district-wide.
Method
Using mixed-methods end-of-training evaluations and follow-up surveys, ratings of program acceptability and use of CARE practices were explored. Overall ratings of social and individual acceptability were examined cross-sectionally and also compared with previously reported acceptability data from teachers. Further, a multiple-case study analysis was conducted with 11 leaders using matched baseline data to identify characteristics that may have impacted their perceptions and responsiveness to the program.
Results
Overall, acceptability of the program was inconsistent for educational leaders. Those with some prior experience with mindfulness, but not those with a regular practice, appeared to receive most benefit from the program. The format of the program also appeared to influence acceptability; many leaders indicated that the program was too long. That said, all leaders who responded to the follow-up survey reported use of CARE practices, and most indicated intrapersonal and interpersonal improvements.
Conclusion
Although educational leaders did derive benefits from participation, there were also challenges with acceptability. More research is needed into the best ways to support the unique needs of educational leaders, including identifying the optimal format for leader professional development. Integrating aspects of mindfulness in pre-service education may be helpful for improving acceptability. Finally, it is important to identify ways to get buy-in and support leader agency regarding their needs for professional development.
Preregistration
This study was not preregistered.
... Yet, the rate of early leaving from the education sector is roughly 30% among new entrants and 20-30% after the fifth year (Pamu, 2010). According to Miller (2013), approximately 20% of public academicians in the United States quit their employment each year. Indeed, substantial employee turnover has become the usual in recent years. ...
... Despite knowledge of this, the school principalship, supported by the experiences of our study's participants, continues to be structured in a manner that sustains long hours, burnout, and stress that promotes health issues for those occupying the role. This status quo must be reconfigured to tailor professional supports for educators throughout their employee life cycle to protect them and to avoid unnecessary principal churn and replacement costs (Tran, McCormick, & Nguyen, 2018), teacher turnover (Béteille et al., 2012), and harm to student achievement (Miller, 2013). ...
Background/Context
Progressive human resources thinking has suggested the importance of employee experiences for workforce engagement, inclusion, and retention, but the intentional design of positive employee experiences requires a deep understanding of workers’ lived experiences in order to respond to their differentiated needs. Although the repeated marginalization of educators who are women, people of color, and from rural spaces have each received attention in their respective literature, little scholarship has intentionally studied the work lives of those who claim all three identities simultaneously.
Purpose
Based on this omission, the present work employs an intersectionality analysis to seek understanding of the employee experiences of Black female rural educators across their career cycles, with the goal of helping employers better craft supportive work experiences for them.
Research Design
Data are collected from semistructured phenomenological interviews with 10 rural Black principals across five school districts, who are asked to reflect on the experiences of their education career journey, from teaching to school leadership.
Conclusion/Recommendations
Findings suggest that the participants’ racial, gender, role, and context identities uniquely impacted each phase of their employee life cycle and therefore require customized attention.
... The problems are exacerbated for impoverished high-needs (high poverty and minority) schools, who often underperform and face more severe educator (i.e., teachers and principals) shortages than their non high-needs counterparts. The pressure of the school leadership position often results in increased principal turnover, which by itself is associated with increased teacher turnover (Jacob, Goddard, Kim, Miller & Goddard., 2015;Miller, 2013). Despite this, research has suggested that effective professional development has the potential to improve student learning outcomes (Jacob, Goddard, Kim, Miller & Goddard 2017;Player & Katz, 2016), as well as improve teacher and principal retention (Jacob, Goddard, Kim, Miller & Goddard, 2015). ...
... Putri (2020) suggested that principals understand their school culture. New principals in historically low-performing secondary schools brought about a change in school culture and how it positively affected student achievement (Miller, 2013;Karadağ et al., 2020;Shen et al., 2020). Kytle & Bogotch (2000) examine school reform efforts through a 'reculturation' model, not a 'restructuring' model. ...
This study aims to describe the implementation of improving school culture-based human resources at SMPN 1 Pematangsiantar. The culture that exists in schools is actually able to become the basis for improving human resources. School culture is closely related to the values, vision and mission of the school that have been built and agreed upon by the school. This research was conducted within the framework of a qualitative research approach. A qualitative research approach is a process followed to explain perceptions and cases about a matter in a way that reflects the truth in their typical environment and as a whole using various data collection techniques such as observation, interviews, and document analysis. The results of the study revealed that the hallmark or characteristics of SMPN 1 Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra Province, namely, based on discipline and being a school of character in forming a cadre of national leaders who are patriotic, have national insight, culture, independence, who are competitive in the fields of science and technology. technology, and skills within the framework of faith and piety have been transformed into a school culture which then contributes to the improvement of human resources. High discipline is one of the advantages of SMP Negeri 1 Pematangsiantar to improve human resources
... Constructive instructional leadership in elementary science has been found to be essential to supporting and encouraging some of the critical pieces needed to be in place for effective science education including (a) collaboration, (b) alignment of the curriculum, (c) implementing modes of teaching science that complement teacher strengths through staff organization, and (d) providing professional development (Casey et al., 2012). The prioritized policies, decisions, and actions administrators enact, often evolve as administrators change positions (Lanier et al., 2009), present substantial structural challenges that elementary science educators must work out through their agential positioning (Lewthwaite, 2004;Miller, 2013). ...
In-service teachers of science work with unique content and pedagogical experiences. Understanding teacher agency in these circumstances will help researchers understand the actions that these teachers take, actions that are consequential for shaping teaching patterns and supporting the development of students’ scientific practices. The purpose of this study was to understand how the agency of six elementary (K–5) in-service teachers was expressed discursively during a global pandemic. The teachers’ agency was qualitatively analyzed using a case study approach (Yin, 2012, 2017) that applied discourse analysis to identify the ways in which science teacher agency is conceptualized, afforded, and constrained through consequential saying, being, and doing (Gee, 2010) within elementary classrooms. I found that elementary science teachers conceptualize and operationalize their agency in service to the student, thus, deprioritizing their own needs as teaching professionals. The teachers have a clear sense of agency, primarily framed by a structure-agency dialectic, the scale of expression is their classroom. I also found that centering the teacher voice during the research process increased teachers’ reflexivity about their professional agency. Recommendations are addressed including future considerations of in-service K-5 teacher agency in science education research.
... Contrary to many studies of leadership and teacher turnover (e.g., Boyd et al., 2011;Kraft et al., 2016;Ladd, 2011), leadership quality, by both teachers' individual or colleagues' reports, was not a statistically significant predictor of teacher turnover. Of the school climate variables, leadership is likely more variable from year to year because of frequently shifting leadership agendas (at school and district levels) and high rates of principal turnover (Miller, 2013). Thus, our first-year measure of leadership may fail to capture the salient effects of changes in leadership over time. ...
Background
To stem the tide of teacher turnover and prevent shortages, teacher turnover interventions and policies often focus on new and novice teachers because evidence suggests that teacher turnover is particularly high among these teachers. In addition, researchers continue to investigate the root causes of the high teacher turnover observed in many low-income, high-minority schools and whether this is due more to school demographics or poor working conditions.
Purpose
This article examines New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) teachers’ risk of leaving their first school in their first 9 years. It both describes the patterns in leaving and examines how school demographics and school climate predict these leaving patterns.
Participants
The study follows 608 teachers: two cohorts of secondary mathematics NYCTF teachers who entered the classroom in New York City in 2006 or 2007.
Research Design
This is a quantitative study of survey and retention data that were collected as part of a longitudinal research project on NYCTF mathematics teachers.
Data Analysis
We use an event history analysis (including a life table and hazard function graphs) to describe patterns in teachers’ timing of leaving their first school. We also use a discrete time hazard model to estimate the relative relationships between the predictors of interest (school demographics and school climate) and teacher turnover.
Results
The findings from this study provide evidence against the general hypothesis in the field that teachers leave their first schools at the highest rate during their first 1 to 3 years. Second, we also found that the turnover of alternatively certified teachers who began in low-income, high-minority urban schools was driven by both student demographics and school climate conditions, including teacher collegiality and student behavior. Third, we found evidence to support our hypothesis that teachers’ individual perceptions of their school environment are stronger drivers of their turnover compared with the perceptions of their colleagues.
Conclusion
The results from this study add to our understanding about the timing of teacher turnover among secondary mathematics NYCTF teachers, illustrating that teacher turnover may remain higher later in beginning teachers’ careers than currently assumed. This suggests that teachers in Years 3 to 5 in their careers may be good targets for supports. Our findings support the theory that improving school climate can help retain teachers but also provide a cautionary tale for a complete focus on school climate; stemming teacher turnover may require addressing larger economic forces (e.g., the global trend toward temporary work) and more insidious social forces, such as structural racism and inequality.
... To address this challenge, Bartanen, Grissom and Rogers treat the principal transition as the unit of observation and arrange the data to have one observation per event per time. This is often known as "stacking method" due to "stacking" the data (Miller, 2013). For example, if a school was treated in 2010 and 2012 and untreated in all other years between 2001-2015, then this school would appear in fifteen rows as two treated observations and thirteen control observations. ...
The Difference in Difference (DiD) estimator is a popular estimator built on the "parallel trends" assumption. To increase the plausibility of this assumption, a natural idea is to match treated and control units prior to a DiD analysis. In this paper, we characterize the bias of matching prior to a DiD analysis under a linear structural model. Our framework allows for both observed and unobserved confounders that have time varying effects. Given this framework, we find that matching on baseline covariates reduces the bias associated with these covariates, when compared to the original DiD estimator. We further find that additionally matching on the pre-treatment outcomes has both cost and benefit. First, it mitigates the bias associated with unobserved confounders, since matching on pre-treatment outcomes partially balances these unobserved confounders. This reduction is proportional to the reliability of the outcome, a measure of how coupled the outcomes are with these latent covariates. On the other hand, we find that matching on the pre-treatment outcome undermines the second "difference" in a DiD estimate by forcing the treated and control group's pre-treatment outcomes to be equal. This injects bias into the final estimate, analogous to the case when parallel trends holds. We extend our bias results to multivariate confounders with multiple pre-treatment periods and find similar results. Finally, we provide heuristic guidelines to practitioners on whether to match prior to their DiD analysis, along with a method for roughly estimating the reduction in bias. We illustrate our guidelines by reanalyzing a recent empirical study that used matching prior to a DiD analysis to explore the impact of principal turnover on student achievement. We find that the authors' decision to match on the pre-treatment outcomes was crucial in making the estimated treatment effect more credible.
... This approach is useful to plan and design training programs that allow principals to be aware of their I-positions in situated contexts and to contribute to professional identity development through dialogue among such I-positions. We consider such approach would offer an alternative to overcome the lack of evidence regarding the impact of existing training proposals either on principals' competencies, teachers' development or students' learning, repeatedly highlighted from research (Branch et al., 2012;Grissom et al., 2015;Miller, 2013). ...
Becoming a competent principal who positively impacts the students, teachers and the school learning and development involves a process of continuous professional identity development. In this chapter we propose to delve into the mechanisms involved in the construction of the identity of school principals from the perspective of Dialogical Self Theory (DST), with the purpose of gaining knowledge regarding how principals’ positioning in everyday situations relate to their professional identity development. Based on that knowledge we also aim at providing recommendations and guidelines for building innovative training proposals that facilitate the professional development of school principals. To this end, we first state the European trends and policies that characterize functions and roles of school principals and revise what we know from research on how different leadership approaches impact on school and students learning. Second, we draw on two cases with different expertise and trajectories as school principals to analyze their dialogical self as principals and identify dialogue among positions when dealing with professional duties and challenges. In the last section, we reflect on how understanding the mechanisms guiding principals’ positioning is useful and suggest the required principles to create evidence-based training proposals promoting the professional identity development of the school principal.
... This approach is useful to plan and design training programs that allow principals to be aware of their I-positions in situated contexts and to contribute to professional identity development through dialogue among such I-positions. We consider such approach would offer an alternative to overcome the lack of evidence regarding the impact of existing training proposals either on principals' competencies, teachers' development or students' learning, repeatedly highlighted from research (Branch et al., 2012;Grissom et al., 2015;Miller, 2013). ...
The university of the 21st century is undergoing a radical and accelerated transformation. Factors such as the continuous increase in students with very different profiles, global competition between universities, the impact of ICT or the emergence of new pedagogical paradigms, such as teaching by competencies, or formative assessment, require new abilities of the university teacher, traditionally based on their academic status, not very permeable and flexible. This chapter identifies and analyzes, from the perspective of the Dialogical Self Theory, the professional positions most commonly held by university teachers and advocates the re-construction of their professional identity, in order to be more adjusted to current challenges, offering some advice and guides for their training.
... This approach is useful to plan and design training programs that allow principals to be aware of their I-positions in situated contexts and to contribute to professional identity development through dialogue among such I-positions. We consider such approach would offer an alternative to overcome the lack of evidence regarding the impact of existing training proposals either on principals' competencies, teachers' development or students' learning, repeatedly highlighted from research (Branch et al., 2012;Grissom et al., 2015;Miller, 2013). ...
The 21st century and its many challenges (invasion of digital technology, climate change, health crises, political crises, etc.) alert us that we need new educational responses, led by new education professionals.
Research has shown that for these professionals to change in a substantial and profound way, they must change their identity, that is, the way in which they give meaning and meaning to their professional work.
This book exposes, based on one of the most current and advanced theories for analyzing identity change -the theory of the dialogical self-, what changes should take place and how to promote them in eleven fundamental professional profiles in current education (teachers of student-teachers, primary & secondary teachers, inclusive teachers, inquiring teachers, mentors, school principals, university teachers, academic advisors, technologic/hybrid teachers, Learning specialists & educational researchers).
... Student data from the franchise model schools indicated a slight decrease during the first year and then an upward trajectory after the second year of implementation. Such performance coincides with Miller's (2013) study of the tendency of student achievement results to decrease during the initial two years of new school leadership. Currently, all student assessments at franchise schools have been suspended due to COVID-19 school closures. ...
This study examines the leadership characteristics and skills of school principals who work within the franchise model framework. This model consists of a successful flagship school principal who is given the charge to be the principal of nearby schools while attempting to align practices and structures of the newly adopted schools to that of the successful flagship school. Three franchise model school principals, fourteen assistant principals, and forty-two teachers were interviewed. Data analysis revealed franchise principals’ characteristics to be seasoned, successful principals with experience leading low-performing schools; challenging the status quo; shared leadership; and visionary leadership to align all franchise campuses. Given the novelty of franchise model schools, it has the potential to develop and retain effective principals for high-needs schools.
... In a school context, systems must be put in place in order to guide and encourage teachers to work to the best of their abilities. The study revealed that in a school where principals and their teachers are engaged in communicating about school teaching and learning, there is no time for gossip (Heide, Claren, Johansson & Simonsson, 2005;Miller, 2013). Under this situation, it can be concluded that the core business in schools, which is quality teaching, is not compromised owing to an enabling school environment that has proper channels of communication. ...
... All three perspectives on the consequences of leader turnover have received some empirical support from different contexts. For example, studies using public school data find that principal turnover causes declines in student achievement and graduation rate as well as increases in teacher turnover and employees absenteeism (Bartanen et al., 2019;B eteille et al., 2012;Løkke & Sørensen, 2020;Miller, 2013). However, studies using local government data suggest that replacing the top management can strengthen the corporate capacity in public organizations (Villadsen, 2016) and improve local government fiscal outcomes (Connolly, 2018). ...
Limited research has taken the contingency perspective to analyze the conditions under which the impact of top leader turnover on public organizations’ performance may vary. Using panel data from New York City public high schools, this study not only examines the main effect of principal turnover on schools’ performance but also how the main effect depends on schools’ baseline performance. Two estimation strategies—namely fixed effect models and Blundell–Bond dynamic panel models—find a consistent pattern that leader turnover is negatively associated with subsequent organizational performance, and the negative impact is stronger in low-performing organizations than it is in high-performing organizations. This study contributes to the literature by showing that the disruptive effects of leader turnover outweigh the adaptive effects in some public organizations. Moreover, the contingency perspective highlights the role of pre-turnover performance in moderating the effect of leader turnover.
... to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline (Federal Commission on School Safety, 2018; U.S. Department of Education, 2014). At smaller scales, individual districts and schools often take on multiple new programs, technologies, or curricula in quick succession (Bryk et al., 1993;Coburn, 2004), while teaching and administrative staff also turn over rapidly (Grissom & Andersen, 2012;Miller, 2013). For example, in Chicago, the last 15 years have brought nine different district CEOs (with a 10th currently being recruited); the closing, turnaround, or reconceiving of 176 schools at the same time that 127 new schools were being opened (Lutton et al., 2018); and seven years of changes in high school graduation requirements (Chicago Board of Education, 2020). ...
Context
For decades, educational leaders and researchers have faced a puzzle: Too often, promising new initiatives are adopted only to be quickly discontinued, while other longstanding practices persist despite efforts to undo them.
Purpose
We provide a framework for analyzing both change and persistence that we argue can shed new light on what sticks and why. Our MoRe institutional approach focuses analytic attention on self-activating modes of reproduction and their observable outcomes. Doing so allows for engagement with processes of both institutionalization and de-institutionalization.
Research Design
We make the case for our MoRe institutional framework by synthesizing across theoretical and empirical literature from both within and outside education. We address common treatments of persistence and change, as well as briefly review scholarship on institutional theory, and identify seven modes of reproduction structuring educational outcomes. We illustrate the utility of our approach concretely using the case of high-stakes testing. Synthesizing existing research across multiple levels of analysis, we demonstrate the ways that high-stakes testing is institutionalized via multiple mechanisms at multiple levels, while also analyzing possibilities for its de-institutionalization.
Recommendations
We conclude with implications for using the framework, focusing on strategies for supporting transformative equity-oriented change. These include processes for analyzing existing educational structures and identifying possible avenues for change, as well as design principles for protecting new practices from churn.
Governments face many constraints in attracting talented managers to the public sector, which often lacks high-powered incentives. In this paper, we study how a civil service reform in Chile changed the effectiveness of a vital group of public sector managers: school principals. First, we estimate principal effectiveness by using an extension of the canonical teacher value-added model. Then we evaluate the effect of the reform on principal effectiveness using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that public schools appointed more effective managers and improved their students’ outcomes after increasing the competitiveness and transparency of their selection process. (JEL D73, H83, I21, J24, J45, O15)
Despite increasing recognition of the importance of high-quality school leadership, we know remarkably little about principal skill development. Using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City, we estimate the returns to principal experience as measured by student outcomes, teacher hiring and retention patterns, and teacher and supervisor ratings of principals. The typical principal leads a school for only 3 to 5 years and leaves the principalship after 6 to 7 years. We find little evidence that school performance improves as principals gain experience, despite substantial improvement in supervisor ratings. Our results suggest that strategies intended to increase principal retention are unlikely to improve school outcomes absent more comprehensive efforts to strengthen the link between principal skill development and student and school outcomes.
A pesquisa tem como objetivo identificar se a composição das equipes escolares atua como vantagem ou constrangimento às práticas de liderança adotadas pelos diretores. O estudo analisa informações sobre 138 escolas do Espírito Santo e Piauí, oriundas da Pesquisa Práticas de Gestão, Liderança Educativa e Qualidade da Educação (Oliveira et al., 2023). Os dados sobre as práticas de liderança foram analisados buscando identificar possíveis correlações entre estas e a disponibilidade de profissionais no âmbito escolar. Os resultados apontam que há diferenças significativas quando comparados os estados abrangidos pela pesquisa, sendo necessária uma análise qualitativa sobre as políticas estaduais. Além disso, nota-se que a presença de mais profissionais pedagógicos na escola não garante boas práticas de liderança, especificamente as relacionadas ao apoio pedagógico, direção, colaboração e observação em sala de aula, algo que pode decorrer da ausência de uma política de equipes multiprofissionais nas escolas, com um fluxo estruturado de trabalho.
Purpose
This study examines principal rotation in China to gain empirical insights from the policy analysis and succession strategies that principals employ to gain internal and external support in their new schools.
Design/methodology/approach
We employed document analysis and a case study approach. Interviews were conducted with officials in 5 local educational agencies and 40 principals from 5 different regions who were undergoing rotation. Thematic analysis was used to identify common patterns and themes in the interview responses.
Findings
We explored how the principal-rotation policy was implemented, including the goals, standards, targeted principals, tools and other aspects of the policy in China. The study revealed the challenges faced by the rotated principals and their succession strategies.
Originality/value
Our study contributes to the field of educational leadership by shedding light on the implementation and impact of principal rotation in mainland China.
As a result of the increasing demands and the changing multi-cultural and socio-economic profile of schools, shortages of quality education leaders are a global issue. In the United States, this is particularly pernicious in urban areas, and traditional pathways to leadership positions pose an array of barriers. There is a growing need for culturally-responsive, critically self-aware social justice-oriented (CR/CSA/SJ) leaders who are better able to retain diverse teachers, more likely to stay in urban schools, contribute to higher achievement of marginalized students, and create inclusive environments. This qualitative study uses interviews to examine the leadership pathways of 72 education leaders at 28 intentionally diverse charter schools across five U.S. locations. Findings suggest that a range of motivations and experiences facilitated their pathways into leadership positions. Implications are relevant globally, at this time of increased awareness of historic societal inequities that schools can help combat.
This study investigates the career trajectories of elementary school principals in Chile between 2015 and 2022 and identifies seven trajectory groups through a multi-trajectory modeling approach. Thirty-three percent of our sample remained working as principals at the same school throughout the period, while seven percent did so in different schools. Among those departing from this role, we found highly heterogeneous pathways regarding their subsequent roles, tenure within the school system, and the probability of returning to the principal role. Our findings reveal that younger individuals, females, and those with full-time contracts are likelier to stay in the principal role. Additionally, the type of school administration emerged as a pivotal predictor of principals’ career trajectories, with private schools (statesubsidized and privately paid) showing higher principal retention. Highperforming schools were more likely to retain their principals, with no significant disparities observed among schools serving students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. These findings illuminate the intricate career paths of school principals, identifying the factors associated with transitions to non-principal positions and exit from the education system, thus offering valuable input for this workforce development.
Districts are investing more in school leadership, including the implementation of residency training programs for aspiring principals. There is limited evidence about the district return on these investments, and none in the context in which principal hiring is decentralized at the school level. This paper develops a model highlighting the conditions under which districts benefit from investments in general leadership skills and examines the residency program in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The event-study analysis that addresses treatment effect heterogeneity finds that principals who complete a residency are significantly more effective at raising achievement. Although the leadership skills gained through the residency are likely to make a principal more valuable to districts outside of CPS, the large majority of residents remain in CPS despite the absence of salary premia for completion of a residency or high performance. These findings suggest the presence of transition costs that enable CPS to retain more effective, residency-trained principals without having to increase pay, thereby realizing some of the return on the investment in general skills.
Principals shape the academic setting of schools. Yet, there is limited evidence on whether principal professional development improves schooling outcomes. Beginning in 2008–2009, Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program required that newly hired principals complete targeted in-service professional development tied to newly established state leadership standards within 5 years of employment. Using panel data on all Pennsylvania students, teachers, and principals, we leverage variation in the timing of PIL induction across principal-school cells and employ difference-in-differences and event study strategies to estimate the impact of PIL induction on teacher and student outcomes. We find that PIL induction increased student math achievement through improvements in teacher effectiveness, and that the effects of PIL induction on teacher effectiveness were concentrated among the most economically disadvantaged and urban schools in Pennsylvania. Principal professional development had the greatest impact on teacher effectiveness when principals completed PIL induction during their first 2 years in the principalship. We also find evidence that teacher turnover declined in the years following the completion of PIL induction. We discuss the implications of our findings for principal induction efforts.
School principals are facing greater challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic than they have ever faced, which has implications for whether they can conduct their work productively and remain in their jobs over the long term. This article draws on a unique, nationally representative, longitudinal panel of K–12 public school principals across the United States to examine principals’ self-reported resource needs and job demands during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as how those resource needs and demands are related to principals’ dissatisfaction and their intention to leave their job. Although principals’ reported resource needs (which increased over time) and teacher shortages were consistently related to dissatisfaction and intention to leave, various other job demands were predictors of dissatisfaction but not the intention to leave. These results have several implications for supporting and retaining principals as well as the teachers they serve.
An emerging body of research has shown that mindfulness practices for school administrators can result in significant benefits, including a reduction in stress and sense of burnout. Concurrently, nearly 20% of school principals exit their position each year—and cite high levels of stress as a primary motivating factor. In this conceptual paper, we seek to align the benefits of mindfulness practices for educators to the causes of principal turnover, as a means to better support local, low-cost strategies to reduce high levels of leadership attrition. We offer a framework that aligns mindfulness research with principal retention research, and follow with an identification of the organizational, social, and cultural barriers to the adoption of mindfulness practices in public schools. We conclude with specific recommendations for school and district leadership to incorporate mindfulness-based interventions into organizational practices in order to help reduce administrator stress, improve task focus, and ultimately address the underlying sources of leadership turnover.
Principals play a critical role in improving schools, but high rates of principal turnover threaten improvement gains. In this study we used a mixed-methods design to examine school, district, and community factors associated with greater principal turnover, and explore how these factors differ for rural schools. We found that rural districts tend to have more first year principals, fewer veteran principals, and higher rates of principal attrition in comparison to their urban and suburban peers. We found that voluntary turnover is not always attributed to school and district working conditions, but also personal and community factors specific to a principal.
Purpose: While previous research has examined the impact of school turnaround models, less is known about the principals who lead these turnaround schools. This study examines the personal demographics, experience, educational background, prior school performance, salaries, and turnover of principals who led two turnaround models in Tennessee's lowest performing schools: a state-run Achievement School District (ASD) that has not yielded positive nor negative effects and local Innovation Zones (iZones) that averaged positive effects on student achievement over six years. Methods: We analyze longitudinal, administrative data from the Tennessee Department of Education from 2006–2007 to 2017–2018 to compare pre- and post-reform means and trends in principal characteristics between ASD, iZone, and similarly low-performing comparison schools. Results: ASD schools had higher principal turnover rates and lost principals whose schools performed higher while iZone schools retained more principals and lost principals whose schools performed lower. Moreover, iZone schools employed more experienced principals, more Black principals, and principals with higher graduate degree attainment and paid their principals more than ASD schools. Salary differences between ASD and iZone schools were not explained by principals’ characteristics, such as years of experience. Implications: Our findings reveal differences in leadership characteristics between iZone and ASD schools that were consistent with differences in the effectiveness of the two turnaround approaches.
Cet article propose un cadre de référence permettant à des décideurs de centres de services scolaires de se doter d’un ensemble intégré de politiques et de pratiques de gestion pouvant influencer la rétention des directions d’établissement. Ce cadre les invite ainsi à envisager la rétention des directions suivant une perspective de développement professionnel durable. Il s’appuie sur une recension des écrits pour identifier un ensemble de leviers tels que la planification stratégique, l’insertion professionnelle, la formation, et l’encadrement par le supérieur hiérarchique, un réseau d’échange et d’entraide, de même que des outils numériques pouvant contribuer à la prise de décision, le monitorage et le suivi.
Purpose: The purpose of this article is to estimate the relationship between principal quality and turnover. Principals can have potentially large effects on student outcomes. When school leaders leave their roles, they cause disruptive effects to the school’s climate. If effective principals are more likely to leave, the negative effects of principal turnover are likely exacerbated. Relatively little, however, is known about the quality of principals who leave the principalship. Research design: We use teachers’ perceptions of their principals as a measure of principal quality to understand the quality of principals who leave schools. We address this research question in New York City public schools from 2013 to 2016, and then replicate it at the national level using the Schools and Staffing Survey data from 2008 to 2012. To understand how principal quality relates to principal turnover, we run linear probability regressions of principal exits on (teacher-assessed) principal quality, controlling for a set of teacher, principal, school, district/state, and time characteristics. Findings: We find that higher quality principals are less likely to leave their schools. This finding persists across school contexts and time, lending robustness to our results. Conclusions: Findings suggest that inasmuch as principal turnover is a concern, it is not driven by higher quality principals. Districts should therefore focus on recruiting more higher quality principals as opposed to focusing on reducing overall principal turnover. Moving forward, research should focus on differential attrition patterns so that efforts to retain principals can be better targeted.
This guide identifies practices that can improve the performance of chronically low-performing schools--a process commonly referred to as creating "turnaround schools." The four recommendations in this guide work together to help failing schools make adequate yearly progress. These recommendations are: (1) signal the need for dramatic change with strong leadership; (2) maintain a consistent focus on improving instruction; (3) provide visible improvements early in the turnaround process (quick wins); and (4) build a committed staff. The guide includes a checklist showing how each recommendation can be carried out. It uses examples from case studies which illustrate practices noted by schools as having had a positive impact on the school turnaround. The following are appended: (1) Postscript from the Institute of Education Sciences; (2) About the authors; (3) Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest; and (4) Technical information on the studies. (Contains 2 tables.) [This report was produced by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences.]
It is widely accepted that teachers differ in their effectiveness, yet the empirical evidence regarding teacher effectiveness is weak. The existing evidence is mainly drawn from econometric studies that use covariates to attempt to control for selection effects that might bias results. We use data from a four-year experiment in which teachers and students were randomly assigned to classes to estimate teacher effects on student achievement. Teacher effects are estimated as between-teacher (but within-school) variance components of achievement status and residualized achievement gains. Our estimates of teacher effects on achievement gains are similar in magnitude to those of previous econometric studies, but we find larger effects on mathematics achievement than on reading achievement. The estimated relation of teacher experience with student achievement gains is substantial, but is statistically significant only for 2nd-grade reading and 3rd-grade mathematics achievement. We also find much larger teacher effect variance in low socioeconomic status (SES) schools than in high SES schools.
The University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) is an international consortium of prestigious research universities committed to advancing the preparation and practice of educational leaders for the benefit of children, schools and society. UCEA, as a consortium, symbolizes an important aspiration--advancing significantly the field of educational leadership through inter-institutional cooperation, communication, and contribution. While much attention has been focused on the issue of teacher retention, very little evidence exists on the issue of principal retention. A small but growing body of evidence suggests that school leaders play a pivotal role in the school improvement process. Further, the evidence suggests that principals must remain on a school for a number of consecutive years to fully impact a school. This report documents the principal tenure and retention rates of newly hired principals in Texas public schools from 1996 through 2008. The purpose of this report is to provide basic information about the actual length of tenure and retention rates of newly hired principals and explore some possible relationships between personal and school characteristics and the tenure and retention of principals. The results of this study suggest eight major findings: 1) Principal tenure and retention rates vary dramatically across school levels, with elementary schools having the longest tenure and greatest retention rates and high schools having the shortest tenure and lowest retention rates.
The authors of this paper find that principal behavior and attributes significantly influence individual student achievement. Effective principal activities include instructional leadership (setting clear priorities and evaluating instructional programs, and organizing and participating in staff development programs) and conflict resolution (establishing a consensus on objectives and methods, maintaining effective discipline, and mediating personal disputes). These results, based upon data from a nationally representative sample of over 14,000 elementary school students, provide strong confirmation of the major conclusions from recent case studies, which arc characterized by very limited samples and weak controls for individual student and teacher attributes. In addition, the finding that principals make a difference to student achievement adds further evidence to the debate over whether schools make a difference.
We estimate the importance of teachers in Chicago public high schools using matched student-teacher administrative data. A one standard deviation, one semester improvement in math teacher quality raises student math scores by 0.13 grade equivalents or, over 1 year, roughly one-fifth of average yearly gains. Estimates are relatively stable over time, reasonably impervious to a variety of conditioning variables, and do not appear to be driven by classroom sorting or selective score reporting. Also, teacher quality is particularly important for lower-ability students. Finally, traditional human capital measures—including those determining compensation—explain little of the variation in estimated quality.
In this paper, we develop an econometric model to estimate the impacts of Electronic Vehicle Management Systems (EVMS) on the load factor (LF) of heavy trucks using data at the operational level. This technology is supposed to improve capacity utilization by reducing coordination costs between demand and supply. The model is estimated on a subsample of the 1999 National Roadside Survey, covering heavy trucks travelling in the province of Quebec. The LF is explained as a function of truck, trip and carrier characteristics. We show that the use of EVMS results in a 16 percentage points increase of LF on backhaul trips. However, we also find that the LF of equipped trucks is reduced by about 7.6 percentage points on fronthaul movements. This last effect could be explained by a rebound effect: higher expected LF on the returns lead carriers to accept shipments with lower fronthaul LF. Overall, we find that this technology has increased the tonne-kilometers transported of equipped trucks by 6.3% and their fuel efficiency by 5%.
Analyzing 1978-83 panel data from more than 700 New York State school districts, the authors find evidence that school superintendents were rewarded, both by higher salary increases and by enhanced opportunities to move to better-paying jobs, for having low school tax rates and high educational achievement within their districts, relative to the values of those variables in comparable school districts in the state. The rewards were, however, quite small. The analysis also suggests that the superintendents themselves did not significantly influence either school tax rates or educational test scores in their districts. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
The authors exploit administrative data combining workers' earnings histories with information about their firms to estimate the magnitude and temporal pattern of displaced workers' earnings losses. They find that high-tenure workers separating from distressed firms suffer long-term losses averaging 25 percent per year. In addition, the authors find that displaced workers' losses (1) begin mounting before their separations; (2) depend only slightly on their age and sex; (3) depend more on local labor-market conditions and their former industries; (4) are not, however, limited to those in a few sectors; and (5) are large even for those who find new jobs in similar firms. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.
This study assessed the effects of a change in principals, called management succession, on school-level basic skills achievement using longitudinal data on 149 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The analysis showed that a change in principals at a school did not affect basic skills achievement until the second year of a new principal's tenure. It was also found that the effects of principal change differed depending on the socioeconomic composition of the school. In schools with low proportions of students who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the effects of succession on achievement were negative, but as the percentage of AFDC students in a school increased beyond 20%, succession effects on achievement turned positive. The findings indicate that changes in school leadership can affect basic skills achievement, but that leadership effects are slow to develop and are conditioned by the socioeconomic context of the school.
Conventional wisdom maintains that changing administrators will improve school performance. Some research evidence suggests, however, that because leader succession is disruptive to communication, decisionmaking and power processes, it will have either no causal effect or a negative effect on organizational effectiveness. Even if the impacts are modest, leader succession produces a naturally occurring set of events that provides excellent opportunities for researchers to assess administrator effects on school performance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to construct a model that specifies a number of major school process and outcome variables associated with administrator succession, (b) to review the succession literature for each component, and (c) to suggest a variety of research strategies to examine administrator succession and effects of leaders on school processes and outcomes
Our detailed study of two secondary schools in Nova Scotia which had experienced regular principal succession examined succession and its impact on teacher morale. We found that the process of principal succession and the new principal's practices have the potential to change a school culture and both positively and negatively affect teacher and institutional morale. Our findings suggest that several factors influence the degree to which morale is affected during principal succession: informal leaders, experience level of staff and the degree to which the principal is considered to be an integral part of the school. We suggest that if attention is paid to these factors new principals can influence their successful entry into their new school.
Leader succession research presents intriguing evidence that leader succession affects school performance. Organizational socialization provides equally tantalizing evidence that leaders are shaped in their organizations. Socialization illuminates processes through which the outcomes of succession can be improved by successors and their superiors. The dynamic interactions among social and personal factors examined by socialization theories, however, are underemphasized by traditional succession frameworks. This omission leaves important gaps in knowledge about leader succession processes and outcomes. A synthesis of traditional succession and socialization research frameworks provides an enriched view of leader succession that can be applied to the study of principal succession, role change, and reform in schools. The literature in organizational socialization and professional socialization applicable to this synthesis is reviewed and compared with earlier succession reviews. Research issues raised by the socialization perspective are discussed.
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). The empirical model incorporates measures of a principal's traits and of the organizational structure, culture, and situational context within a school. The discussion focuses on (1) the impact of salary, school characteristics, and principal traits and on (2) their associated policy implications. Evidence from the study suggests that schools with higher proportions of at-risk students and less-qualified teachers are disadvantaged with respect to their ability to retain (and attract) principals. At the same time, the evidence suggests that higher salaries can be used to compensate for these disparities.
To assess the effects of principal turnover on school organizational structures and effectiveness at elementary and secondary levels, the operations of schools that changed principals were compared to those that retained principals. Studies of organizational dynamics have identified important structural variables that can be applied to school settings, including such variables as organizational linkages that affect instruction (particularly those among school specialists, principals, and teachers). These studies have also revealed effectiveness indicators, including staff perception of effectiveness and job satisfaction and student attitudes toward school. A project conducted at 89 schools in a midwestern state--37 schools with new and 52 with continuing principals--sampled the opinions of teachers on organizational and instructional effectiveness by means of variously derived indexes that measured such institutional variables as intensity of work system interdependence, communication, school discipline, isolation, perceived organizational effectiveness, and indicators of job satisfaction; in addition, students responded to nine items describing their attitudes and the school climate. After the scored responses were averaged, no evidence was found either that principal succession has a significant effect on structural linkages or that succession increases or decreases organizational effectiveness. Further research should examine factors maintaining continuity in structures, possible time-lag effects of turnovers, and the pre- and postarrival phases of principal succession. (JW)
This paper uses administrative data from two states covering the school years 1987–1988 to 2000–2001 to examine principal turnover and mobility. We use a longitudinal event history modeling approach to examine whether individual characteristics of the principal and the school in which they work are related to different types of principal turnover. We find that over the time period considered, turnover among all school principals was 14 percent in Illinois and 18 percent in North Carolina. Only 20 percent of this turnover was due to principals leaving the system in Illinois; and 13 percent in North Carolina. However, we observe some interesting variation by school characteristics. Specifically, we find that principals in schools with a larger proportion of minority students are more likely to change schools and to leave the principalship, but remain in the system.
Contemporary educational theory holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. This theory also holds that these school staffing problems are primarily due to shortages of teachers, which, in turn, are primarily due to recent increases in teacher retirements and student enrollments. This analysis investigates the possibility that there are other factors—those tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools—that are driving teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems. The data utilized in this investigation are from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The results of the analysis indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the technical sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a "revolving door"—where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement. Moreover, the data show that the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that associated with other factors, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. The article concludes that popular education initiatives, such as teacher recruitment programs, will not solve the staffing problems of such schools if they do not also address the organizational sources of low teacher retention.
This condition report focuses on how principal turnover at new high schools affects school culture and student performance and how principals manage the transition to new leadership to minimize this impact. Using both quantitative and qualitative data on high schools in New York City, we examine the organizational structures that allow a sustained focus on student learning while the leadership is undergoing a transition.
This paper presents the first large study of public management quality and its effect on program performance. Using 5 years of data from more than 1000 Texas school districts, the authors measure quality as the additional salary paid to school superintendents over and above the normal determinants of salary. This measure of managerial quality is positively correlated with 10 of 11 performance indicators covering organizational goals ranging from standardized tests to school attendance. These relationships hold even in the presence of controls for other determinants of program success. The measure has the potential to be used in tests of existing management theories, thus moving the literature beyond case studies to more systematic research involving many subjects. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy and Analysis and Management.
This paper investigates whether and how individual managers affect corporate behavior and performance. We construct a manager-firm matched panel data set which enables us to track the top managers across different firms over time. We find that manager fixed effects matter for a wide range of corporate decisions. A significant extent of the heterogeneity in investment, financial, and organizational practices of firms can be explained by the presence of manager fixed effects. We identify specific patterns in managerial decision-making that appear to indicate general differences in "style" across managers. Moreover, we show that management style is significantly related to manager fixed effects in performance and that managers with higher performance fixed effects receive higher compensation and are more likely to be found in better governed firms. In a final step, we tie back these findings to observable managerial characteristics. We find that executives from earlier birth cohorts appear on average to be more conservative; on the other hand, managers who hold an MBA degree seem to follow on average more aggressive strategies. © 2001 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This paper reports estimates of the causal effects of a 50 percent increase in the salary of headmasters of high schools in Israel. The results suggest that the program led to significant improvements in twelfth-grade students' academic achievements. However, the effect was relatively modest, comprising increases of about 5-10 percent in the school mean matriculation rate, average score and number of subjects and credit units taken in matriculation programs. Based on these results and the lack of evidence regarding the effect of increasing teachers' salary, it seems that priority should be given to paying higher wages to school principals. Copyright © The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2008 .
Although school accountability incentives and standards, such as district-mandated goals and state sanctions for poor performance, are increasingly common, few studies have investigated their effectiveness. The author of this paper seeks evidence on whether such policies affect public secondary principal pay and school performance. An analysis of cross-sectional variation in data from the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey indicates that accountability policies coincided with lower college matriculation rates and lower principal pay, particularly for the best principals. On the other hand, the policies were associated with higher student retention rates at the worst schools. Though principals at those schools may not have been directly rewarded through accountability policies, these principals appear to have acted as agents for students in danger of dropping out.
This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effects of principals on public high school students' academic achievement, using High School and Beyond. Despite policy relevance, previous qualitative and quantitative research provides little systematic evidence on principal effects, at least for high schools. Principal characteristics and variables designed to capture less tangible aspects of the principal's role are included in educational production functions. The results suggest principals do have a measurable impact on student achievement, through the selection of teachers and setting of academically oriented school goals.
Does raising the principal's wage improve the school's outcomes? Quasi-experimental evidence from an unusual policy exper-iment in Israel Public management and organizational performance: The effect of managerial quality
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The work of Chicago public schools' principals: Leading in a complex context with high stakes
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School choice, information disclosure and sanctions: Evi-dence from an unusually tough school accountability regime
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Implicit performance awards: An empirical analysis of the labor market for public school administrators
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Succeeding leaders? A study of principal succession and sustainability Technical Report Ontario Principal's Council
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