Who Leads Turnaround Schools? Characteristics of Principals in Tennessee's Achievement School District and Innovation Zones

Purpose: While previous research has examined the impact of school turnaround models, less is known about the principals who lead these turnaround schools. This study examines the personal demographics, experience, educational background, prior school performance, salaries, and turnover of principals who led two turnaround models in Tennessee's lowest performing schools: a state-run Achievement School District (ASD) that has not yielded positive nor negative effects and local Innovation Zones (iZones) that averaged positive effects on student achievement over six years. Methods: We analyze longitudinal, administrative data from the Tennessee Department of Education from 2006–2007 to 2017–2018 to compare pre- and post-reform means and trends in principal characteristics between ASD, iZone, and similarly low-performing comparison schools. Results: ASD schools had higher principal turnover rates and lost principals whose schools performed higher while iZone schools retained more principals and lost principals whose schools performed lower. Moreover, iZone schools employed more experienced principals, more Black principals, and principals with higher graduate degree attainment and paid their principals more than ASD schools. Salary differences between ASD and iZone schools were not explained by principals’ characteristics, such as years of experience. Implications: Our findings reveal differences in leadership characteristics between iZone and ASD schools that were consistent with differences in the effectiveness of the two turnaround approaches.

Computer Science Trends and Trade-offs in California High Schools

Purpose: We aim to better understand the curricular, staffing, and achievement trade-offs entailed by expansions of high-school computer science (CS) for students, schools, and school leaders. Methods: We use descriptive, correlational, and quasi-experimental methods to analyze statewide longitudinal course-, school-, and staff-level data from California, where CS course taking has expanded rapidly. Findings: We find that these rapid CS course expansions have not come at the expense of CS teachers’ observable qualifications (namely certification, education, or experience). Within-school course taking patterns over time suggest that CS enrollment growth has come at the expense of social studies, English/language arts (ELA), and arts courses, as well as from other miscellaneous electives. However, we find no evidence that increased enrollment of students in CS courses at a school has a significant effect on students’ math or ELA test scores. Implications: Flexible authorization requirements for CS teachers appear to have allowed school leaders to staff new CS courses with teachers whose observable qualifications are strong, though we do not observe teachers’ CS teaching skill. Increasing CS participation is unlikely to noticeably improve school-level student test scores, but administrators also do not need to be overly concerned that test scores will suffer. However, school leaders and policymakers should think carefully about what courses new CS courses will replace and whether such replacements are worthwhile.

How Conceptions of Equity Inform Principal Data Use: A Purposeful Examination of Principals From Four School Districts

In this study, we examine principals’ data use within four districts are engaged in district-level professional learning around equity. Drawing on Gutierrez's framework for dimensions of equity, we consider how principals engage in data use in light of the dimensions of access, achievement, identity, and power. Findings suggest each district had its own definition of equity and engaged in work at advancing equity based on this unique definition. We conclude with implications for policy, preparation, and practice related to these different understandings of equity.

From Compliance to Improvement: How School Leaders Make Sense of Institutional and Technical Demands When Implementing a Continuous Improvement Process

Purpose: A recurring frustration in educational research is the tendency for school leaders to implement reforms in ways that prioritize compliance over more substantive improvements to practice. Drawing on new institutional theory and sensemaking theory, this article explores the different ways leaders respond to continuous improvement (CI) reforms and why they frequently privilege external compliance over the perceived needs of their schools. Methods: This study used interviews, observations, and artifacts to analyze how six leaders across two midwestern school districts led the implementation of a CI method. Data analysis involved an iterative process of identifying emergent themes, refining themes based on existing research, and evaluating their usefulness in explaining differences within and across school leaders, in order to understand the different ways leaders responded to CI and what factors caused them to prioritize compliance over substantive improvement. Findings: Findings illuminate six different responses to CI that vary across three dimensions: whether leaders prioritize bridging or buffering, the form or the function of reform, and concerns for external legitimacy or internal improvement. Leaders’ professional identities, their beliefs about the usefulness of CI, and their perception of district regulation contributed to whether they implemented CI in a way that prioritized concerns for legitimacy over improvement. Implications: These findings trace the shallow reach of recent reform efforts to the ways leaders make sense of the complex institutional and technical demands of their role, offer an integrative typology of leaders’ different approaches to implementation, and identify factors that support more productive responses to district reform.

“If I Ever Leave, I Have a List of People That Are Going With Me:” Principals’ Understandings of and Responses to Place Influences on Teacher Staffing in West Virginia

Purpose: Schools across the predominately rural state of West Virginia are experiencing widespread teacher shortages, though recruitment and retention difficulties are unevenly distributed across place. Using spatial in/justice as our framework, we explore how principals define place, how place influences principal perceptions of teacher recruitment and retention, and how principals respond to these staffing challenges given their leadership experiences, relationship to school community, and understandings of place affordances and disadvantages. Research Methods/Approach This research utilized interviews with eight principals across six school districts in West Virginia over a four-month time frame. We inductively coded interview transcripts in iterative cycles using our research framework as a guide for emic and etic codes. Findings: We find principals’ understanding of place influences on staffing to be specific to the unique attributes of each community and the placement of their leadership experiences – as community returners, seasoned though not originally from the community, and new-to-place. Their understandings of spatial in/justice as it relates to teacher staffing shape ideas of place affordances and disadvantages and recruitment and retention practices. These findings complexify the teacher staffing picture across geographically diverse rural places and the responses available to leaders given their leadership experience and relationship to place. Implications for Research and Practice The place-specific influences on teacher staffing problematize statewide policy mechanisms for ameliorating teacher shortages. The findings also suggest the need for further in-depth qualitative research within districts and across states, with an emphasis on racially diverse rural places.

The Principal-Teacher Churn: Understanding the Relationship Between Leadership Turnover and Teacher Attrition

Purpose: Principals are critical to school improvement and play a vital role in creating inclusive and high-performing schools. Yet, approximately one in five principals leave their school each year, and turnover is higher in schools that serve low-income students of color. Relatedly, high rates of teacher turnover exacerbate challenges associated with unstable learning environments. Our study examines the extent to which principal turnover influences teacher turnover. We build on past work by exploring how the relationship between teacher and principal turnover differs in urban, high-poverty settings and by examining the effects of chronic principal turnover. Research Methods/Approach: We draw on a student- and employee-level statewide longitudinal dataset from Texas that includes all public K-12 schools from school years 1999–2000 to 2016–17. We estimate teacher-level models with school fixed effects, allowing us to compare teacher turnover in schools leading up to and immediately following a principal exit, to otherwise similar schools that do not experience principal turnover. Findings: Teacher turnover spikes in schools experiencing leadership turnover, and these effects are greater among high-poverty and urban schools, in schools with low average teacher experience, and in schools experiencing chronic principal turnover. Implications: Improving leadership stability, especially in urban schools experiencing chronic principal turnover may be an effective approach to reducing teacher turnover. Principal and teacher turnover and their relationship with each other requires further investigation. The field would benefit from qualitative research that can provide important insights into the individual decisions and organizational processes that contribute to principal turnover.

School Leaders’ Use of Social-Emotional Learning to Disrupt Whiteness

Purpose: This article examines how school leaders connect Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) with anti-racist practices. Current literature has yet to explain how leaders support race conscious approaches to SEL that promote marginalized students’ well-being, particularly with White teachers who often resist learning about race and Whiteness. Research Approach: We conducted a qualitative study of three leaders in one district in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. The first data collection and analysis phase drew from interviews, observations, and artifacts from a larger study to identify anti-racist SEL intersections and the leaders associated with these intersections. In the second phase, we conducted additional interviews with three leaders and performed a critical frame analysis to characterize the frames used by leaders to shape what SEL means and who it serves. Findings: We describe three anti-racist SEL intersections in which leaders made explicit connections between SEL and broader anti-racist goals within their work with White teachers. We found that leaders framed SEL strategically to address White teachers’ emotions, and as tools teachers might use to understand and address students’ racialized classroom experiences Implications: Findings provide illustrative examples of leadership that connects anti-racist practice with SEL and explore how leaders’ novel understanding of SEL and anti-racism undergirds this leadership approach.

Leadership for Family and Community Engagement: A Qualitative Policy Analysis of State Principal Evaluation Processes

Purpose: The primary purpose of this policy analysis is to examine how states changed their principal performance evaluation systems since the passage of Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. In particular, we focus on whether states have capitalized on the flexible policy landscape to make space for meaningful family and community engagement (FCE) in assessing principals’ effectiveness. Research Methods: This study uses document analysis to review the structure of principal evaluation systems in all 50 states and selects 17 revised systems for a deeper review of their approach to leadership for partnering with families and communities. Findings: A plurality of states have not substantively revised their evaluation systems. Several of the revised systems narrowly focused on instructional leadership and student achievement measures and were thus unsupportive of meaningful FCE and federal policy aims for schools to work in partnership with family and community stakeholders. The principal evaluation systems most supportive of authentic family and community engagement allowed for flexible goal setting and explicitly encouraged the use of stakeholder feedback as evidence of principals’ effectiveness. Implications for Research and Policy: The authors discuss the implications of the results in terms of 1.) expanding definitions of educational leadership to include tenets of authentic FCE, 2.) creating coherent yet compendious systems for school improvement, and 3.) planning for and implementing a developmental approach to the evaluation of school leaders.

Diversity Ideology and School Leadership: Obscuring Inequities for Emergent Bilingual Students in Career and Technical Education

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which school leaders in career and technical education (CTE) conceptualized diversity and inclusion for emergent bilingual students (EBs) and how their beliefs about diversity manifested in institutional support (or lack thereof) for EBs. Research Method: This study draws on data collected during a year-and-a-half long qualitative case study at a large, nationally recognized CTE center. The primary sources of data were interviews with administrators, teachers, and students; local artifacts, student records, and state-level enrollment data were also used. Findings: CTE administrators adhered to diversity ideology when discussing issues of diversity and EBs' inclusion at their institution and believed that they cultivated an inclusive educational environment. This ideology resulted in superficial diversity and inclusion initiatives that did not ensure that EBs had equitable access to CTE program nor that teachers had a sufficient system of support to ensure EBs’ academic success, despite the administration's stated commitment to equal opportunity and inclusion. Implications: These findings suggest the need for administrators to critically examine their conceptualization of diversity and equity when considering how to support EBs in CTE programs.