Photo by Rich Clement
Each October, National Principals Month recognizes the essential role principals play in making schools great. If you’re interested in learning more about how to prepare and support effective principals, check out these resources from our recent project for the U.S. Department of Education. The project shared lessons learned from innovative programs that develop effective school leaders.
- Strategies for Developing Assistant Principals as School Leaders. KIPP’s rapid growth over the past two decades created an enormous need for strong principals to lead its schools. Like public school districts, KIPP identifies principal candidates primarily from the pool of assistant principals in a school. Read about KIPP’s strategies for using the assistant principal experience to develop the skills needed to serve as a school’s top administrator. During this webinar, KIPP discussed lessons learned from the job-embedded development opportunities it provides to prepare assistant principals for this role.
- Preparing Leaders to Make a Difference for Students and Schools. Given the critical role that school leaders play, states and districts are rethinking how they prepare principals. But retooling principal preparation raises a number of important questions: What skills do new principals need? How can schools identify aspiring principals with potential to develop? And how can we use these insights to improve training of leaders at all levels, from teacher leaders to principal supervisors? In this webinar, New Leaders shares insights from its extensive experience preparing new school leaders.
- Investing in Leadership for School Improvement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides an opportunity for states and districts to invest in preparing and developing school leaders. In this webinar, two states discuss how to leverage ESSA to improve school leadership, especially in low-performing schools.
- Developing Principals as Instructional Leaders. Two national organizations—the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching and the National Institute for School Leadership—discuss their strategies to prepare principals as instructional leaders in this webinar.
Read more about our work to find out what can be done, how to make it happen, and where to go next in preparing and supporting principals for success in their roles as school leaders.
