Impact of School Leaders
While there has been considerable anecdotal discussion about the importance of school leaders, there has been very little systematic research into the impact of them on student outcomes. Recent analysis in the United States has provided evidence by looking at how the gains in student achievement for a school change after the principal changes. This outcome-based approach to measuring effectiveness of principals is very similar to the value-added modeling that has been applied to the evaluation of teachers. When done for principals in the state of Texas, it is found that principals have a very large impact on student achievement. Effective school leaders have been shown to significantly improve the performance of all students in a school, at least in part through their impacts on selecting and retaining good teachers. Ineffective principals, however, have a similarly large negative effect on school performance, suggesting that issues of evaluation are as important with respect to school leadership as they are for teachers.
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