Preparing Principals to Lead

Principals are critical to school success, so investing in highly effective leaders should be an intentional and districtwide systematic effort. This resource covers best practices from leading districts that have improved the quality and impact of their school leaders.

Principals are critical to school success, but the demands on schools have proliferated, making the role increasingly complex. As a result, principals often struggle to make a significant impact on teaching and learning.

This executive briefing highlights four best practices for effective professional development for principals. It’s intended for district leaders and principal supervisors who want to gain quick understanding of the best ways to support their principals’ leadership success.

Maximizing principal impact in schools

There is a growing need to equip principals with essential leadership skills as they are key to significantly improving teaching and learning outcomes. However, principals rarely achieve the desired improvements in these outcomes. Meta-analyses reveal the core leadership competencies that have the greatest impact on student achievement, and district leaders can play a key role in developing these competencies in all school leaders.

Root cause and data analysis training

To ensure principals develop the necessary strategic and analytical thinking skills, district leaders should provide explicit training in root cause problem-solving and data analysis during onboarding and professional development for principals. Principals should be expected to demonstrate their mastery of these skills to district leadership and use root cause analysis to inform school improvement plans.

Benefits to school leadership who completed this exercise

95%

of principals learned how to solve problems using root-cause analysis for the first time

67%

of principals demonstrated proficiency in root-cause problem solving within the first year of learning…