What Difference Does an Effective Principal Make?
An effective principal can make a big difference for a school, as Wallace's president Will Miller explains in this talk for a group of principals and other educators.
Will Miller, Wallace's president, gave the keynote address before an audience of school principals and other educators at the Cahn Fellowship Annual Leadership Conference in New York City. In it, he reviews evidence from a synthesis about what's been learned from two decades of research about the impact of effective principals on student, school, and teacher success.
The presentation also covers current challenges to the principalship. Recent surveys have found that principals and teachers are feeling the stress of increased, partisan political polarization, and that there are warning signs that more principals may be leaving the profession.
These stresses, Miller argues, underscore the need to do more to develop and support principals. He discusses three steps districts and states can take:
- creating learning communities, where principals can discuss exchange ideas
- building district-led, "comprehensive, aligned" principal pipelines, which offer a systematic approach to cultivating and supporting principals
- collaborating on statewide approaches to support principals
