For more than a century, numerous studies examined and reported how principals allocated their time. Assuming that differences in selection, participation and satisfaction of tasks by principals resulted in different outcomes, researchers have continued to study principal time use. In 1989, Wimpelberg, Teddlie, and Stringfield indicated a need for…

Strong teacher and principal evaluation systems have the potential to help teachers and principals improve their practice, to exit teachers who are perennially ineffective, to retain teachers who are effective and learn from them, and to increase the overall quality of a district's teacher workforce. As states respond to widespread concerns (both…

This report is the first in a series by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) that examines the current status of states' teacher policies. Updated on a two-year cycle, each will cover a specific area of teacher policy. This report focuses on state teacher policies governing what states require in evaluations of both teachers and…

This memo, which is the third in the series, highlights the work of Summit View Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona and its use of ideas and practices from a blended online course, Student Agency in Assessment and Learning (SAAL) developed by researchers at WestEd, also an ALP grantee. This memo describes how the school's participation in the…

The selection process for a high school principal rather than the principal evaluation process should be the focus of efforts to improve instructional leadership in high schools.

This paper presents a newly implemented model of principal preparation at a public university in the southwestern United States. The authors begin by identifying a number of innovative practices currently being carried out within educational administration programs across the United States. Informed by the context of these national models, the…

We present a multi-phase coaching model that was implemented to help principals improve their instructional leadership practices. We then discuss a rubric based on this coaching model that we used to evaluate coaches' implementation of key model phases and to identify principals' responses to the coaching. After presenting the…

This survey report contains the results of the 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 Teacher and Principal Surveys conducted by Stanford's Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA). The surveys were administered to teachers and principals in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). This report appears in two parts, each highlighting some of…

Public education is a cornerstone of democracy, a prerequisite for economic recovery, and a key lever in achieving national commitment to equal opportunity for all. Although the nearly 90,000 public school principals constitute a relatively small percentage of the public education sector, their work can have a "ripple effect" on the 3.4…

Principals play a central role in how well a school performs. They are responsible for establishing school goals and developing strategies for meeting them. They lead their schools' instructional programs, recruit and retain teachers, maintain the school climate, and allocate resources. How well they execute these and other leadership functions is…

During the past few years, more than 30 states have enacted legislation to change the way teachers are evaluated. The new laws require the annual evaluation of teachers; typically, multiple evaluations during the school year are required for new teachers. They also require the use of multiple measures to determine a teacher's effectiveness and tie…

This article refers to a study on how the school principal engaged in the process after a school self-evaluation. The study examined how two primary schools followed up the evaluation. Although they both used the same evaluation tool, the schools' understanding and application of results differed greatly. This paper describes and discusses the…

This policy brief provides principal evaluation system designers information about the technical soundness and cost (i.e., time requirements) of publicly available school climate surveys. The authors focus on the technical soundness of school climate surveys because they believe that using validated and reliable surveys as an outcomes measure can…

The literature on effective schools emphasizes teacher quality as a critical input for improving student outcomes. Teacher certification status, years of experience and possession of a graduate degree are three factors commonly taken into consideration when assessing teacher quality. With the advent of advanced measurement tools, however,…

The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) is a multirater assessment of principals' learning-centered leadership. The instrument was developed based on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. In this article, we report on the validity and reliability evidence for the VAL-ED accumulated in a national field…