Citizen Mobilization and Community Institutions: the Public Education Network's Policy Initiatives - Executive Summary

The executive summary for a report that analyzes the results of a bold set of initiatives designed to stimulate and support public responsibility for public education in 14 locales around the country. Local education funds (LEFs) led these initiatives, which received support from the Annenberg Foundation through the LEFs' national organization, the Public Education Network (PEN). In each of the three initiatives, the LEFs were expected to lead a process of community engagement in one area of local education policy: equipping students to meet the standards set forth in accountability systems; improving teaching quality; or strengthening school-community ties

Costs of Participation in the School Administration Manager (SAM) Process

Analyzes variations in school districts' implementation costs, by model, of the school administration manager process to help principals increase the time they spend on instructional leadership. Explores funding sources

Implementation of the National SAM Innovation Project: A Comparison of Project Designs

Compares increases in principals' instructional time and other benefits of hiring school administration managers specifically for the position to help principals with time management and of assigning the task to those who hold other school positions

Districts Taking Charge of the Principal Pipeline

Six urban school districts received support from The Wallace Foundation to address the critical challenge of supplying schools with effective principals. The experiences of these districts may point the way to steps other districts might take toward this same goal. Since 2011, the districts have participated in the Principal Pipeline Initiative, which set forth a comprehensive strategy for strengthening school leadership in four interrelated domains of district policy and practice:Leader standards to which sites align job descriptions, preparation, selection, evaluation, and support.Preservice preparation that includes selective admissions to high-quality programs.Selective hiring, and placement based on a match between the candidate and the school.On-the-job evaluation and support addressing the capacity to improve teaching and learning, with support focused on needs identified by evaluation.The initiative also brought the expectation that district policies and practices related to school leaders would build the district's capacity to advance its educational priorities. The evaluation of the Principal Pipeline Initiative has a dual purpose: to analyze the processes of implementing the required components in the participating districts from 2011 through 2015; and then to assess the results achieved in schools led by principals whose experiences in standards-based preparation, hiring, evaluation, and support have been consistent with the initiative's requirements. This report addresses implementation of all components of the initiative as of 2014, viewing implementation in the context of districts' aims, constraints, and capacity

Cultivating Talent through a Principal Pipeline

This report, the second in a series, describes early results of Wallace's Principal Pipeline Initiative, a multi-year effort to improve school leadership in six urban school districts. The report describes changes in the six districts' practices to recruit, train and support new principals. It also offers early lessons for other districts considering changes to their own principal pipelines

Achievement Trends in Schools With School Administration Managers (SAMs)

Compares student achievement trends over two years in schools with school administration managers helping principals increase the time they spend on instruction and schools without SAMs. Explores links between principals' time and student performance

Strong Pipelines, Strong Principals: A guide for leveraging federal sources to fund principal pipelines

A comprehensive, aligned principal pipeline is a systematic approach districts can use to develop and support school principals – one that researchers have termed a feasible, affordable and effective way to improve student achievement. This guide shows how federal funding sources can be used to help cover its cost, which is estimated at less than half a percent of a large district's annual budget

Six Districts Begin the Principal Pipeline Initiative

This first report of an ongoing evaluation of The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative describes the six participating school districts' plans and activities during the first year of their grants. The evaluation, conducted by Policy Studies Associates and the RAND Corporation, isintended to inform policy makers and practitioners about the process of carrying out new policies and practices for school leadership and about the results of investments in the Principal Pipeline Initiative. This report is based on collection and analysis of qualitative data, including the districts' proposals, work plans, and progress reports and semi-structured interviews in spring 2012 with 91 administrators employed by districts and their partner institutions. Leaders in all districts report wanting to enlarge their pools of strong applicants for principal positions and to identify and cultivate leadership talent as early as possible in educators' careers.Districts are actively working on allrequired pipeline components: (1) with stakeholder participation, they have developed standards and identified competencies for principals, which they plan to use to guide principal training, hiring, evaluation, and support; (2) they are initiating or strengthening partnerships with university training programs; (3) for hiring, they have standard performance tasks and are developing systems to capture data on candidates' experience; (4) they have diagnostic evaluation tools and are working to build the capacity of principals' supervisors and mentors to support principals' skill development. In addition, all are also bolstering district-run training programs for graduates of university training programs who aspire to become principals

Evaluation of the School Administration Manager Project

Examines the results to date of a Wallace-supported project to help principals delegate some administrative and managerial tasks to school administration managers and spend more time interacting with teachers, students and others on instructional matters

The Principal Pipeline Initiative in Action

Strong principals are central to improving schools—indeed, leadership is second only to teaching among school-related factors that influence student achievement. Districts struggle, however, to develop a sufficient pool of highly capable principals. While research has identified strategies that are effective in preparing and supporting school leaders, few districts have pulled together a coherent set of strategies to form a pipeline to the principalship.Recognizing the need to improve the supply of high-quality principals, The Wallace Foundation launched the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI) in 2011. The goal was to test the proposition that districts could produce a large cadre of strong novice principals by making a concerted effort to implement a set of interrelated policies and practices, and that doing so would positively affect school outcomes. Participating districts focused on implementing four key components:? Adopting standards of practice and performance to guide principal preparation, hiring, evaluation, and support? Improving the quality of preservice preparation for principals? Using selective hiring and placement practices to match principal candidates with schools? Implementing on-the-job evaluation and support for novice principals (those in their first three years on the job)Six large districts received multi-year grants of $8.5 million to$13.25 million from the foundation to cover a portion of the start-up costs of developing a principal pipeline. The districts were selected partly because they had already adopted some policies and practices consistent with the PPI components. The foundation also provided technical assistance. The PPI sought not only to institute, grow, and sustain the key components within each participating district, but also to generate examples that other districts might follow