A new school year means new excitement and new challenges. School leaders in particular see it all—and have plenty of stories to tell from years past. Whether this is your first year in school leadership or your twenty-fifth, Wallace’s Principal Pipeline Podcast has lots of lessons to take away.
This two-part podcast series features in-depth conversations with school principals, district-level leaders, state leaders, and university officials who’ve developed strong principal pipelines, so that others can listen and learn from their experiences.
In the first series, practitioners share what they’ve learned from implementing principal pipelines in their districts.
- Episodes one and two examine the benefits of improving job standards to attract and retain quality school leaders.
- Episode three emphasizes the power of partnerships between districts and local university preparation programs.
- Episode four explores the importance of providing mentors for novice principals.
- Episode five looks at the role states play in building strong pipelines, and episode six shows how school districts are reimagining two roles—assistant principal and principal supervisor—to keep their pipelines strong.
The second series expands on ideas from the first, discussing the benefits of principal pipelines for districts and students based on findings from Wallace’s Principal Pipeline Initiative.
- In episodes seven and eight, results from a RAND Corporation study found that six large school districts that built principal pipelines saw notable, statistically significant benefits for student achievement and better retention for new principals.
- Episode nine looks at the researchers’ methods behind their study of over 1,000 schools, emphasizing that there is no “gold standard” of comparison when it comes to gauging a strong pipeline.
- Episode ten discusses how pipeline building enhanced existing school leadership improvement efforts for those six districts, revealing that sustaining principal pipelines was feasible, affordable, and effective.
- Lastly, episode eleven examines how universities can improve preparation to meet principal hiring needs and how states can help to promote pipelines.
Wallace’s complete Principal Pipeline Podcast series is available on all streaming platforms.
