Project Activities
Researchers will describe and analyze how school leaders are selected, trained, hired, and placed in schools. They will then use data on students, teachers, leaders and schools to determine the potential relationship between leaders' characteristics, the leadership pipeline process, and student outcomes.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project will take place in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Tennessee public schools.
Sample
Participants include all principal candidates and new principals in CPS and the state of Tennessee from 2006-07 to 2017-18. Principal candidates include teachers, assistant principals, and other educators in the two sites who are recruited as potential leaders.
Malleable factors include leadership pipeline processes such as leader recruitment, formal and informal leadership preparation, and hiring and placement processes.
Research design and methods
This cross-site, mixed-methods study will link three types of data: administrative data on students and educators, data from CPS- and Tennessee-wide surveys of teachers and leaders, and interview and focus group data from school leaders, leadership preparation program staff, and those involved in the principal hiring processes. The quantitative analysis will model leader and school outcomes as a function of various pre-service characteristics and leadership pipeline characteristics using regression-based longitudinal-data techniques that control for other factors affecting these outcomes. Interviews with school and district leaders and other informants will complement the statistical analyses.
Control condition
Due to the exploratory nature of the research design, there is no control condition.
Key measures
Measures include including student achievement and behavioral outcomes, principal evaluation ratings, teachers' survey ratings of school climate, retention rates of effective teachers, and principal turnover.
Data analytic strategy
The analysis will include descriptive analysis, more advanced multivariate methods, and qualitative analysis. The main analyses of early-career job effectiveness will model outcomes, such as evaluation ratings, as a function of leader or pipeline characteristics, time-varying school characteristics, and school fixed effects. Researchers will apply a mixture of inductive and deductive methods to interview and focus group data.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Products: Researchers will produce preliminary evidence of potentially promising principal pipeline processes, and present policy briefs and reports as well as peer-reviewed publications.
Publications:
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Additional project information
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
