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School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace Foundation school leadership initiative in six large school districts provides insights that may offer districts a way forward. Most important, the research finds that it is possible for districts to put in place the four key parts of a strong principal pipeline: apt standards for principals, high-quality pre-service training, rigorous hiring procedures, and tightly aligned on-the-job performance evaluation and support. Moreover, building a pipeline can produce several swift benefits for districts and principals alike. These include principal job standards that foster a districtwide understanding of what constitutes effective leadership for local schools, a possible greater compatibility between principals and the schools to which they are assigned, and performance evaluations designed not only to measure what's important but also to help principals succeed at their very tough jobs. At the same time, the research makes clear that some elements of the pipeline are particularly complex undertakings. For example, it's simpler for districts to upgrade their own training programs for aspiring principals than it is to work with universities to improve the university-based programs from which many aspiring school leaders graduate. In addition, fixing what many see as the weakest link in principal training--providing candidates with meaningful, practical experience in the form of internships or residencies--can be expensive and involved. This "Perspective" also provides estimates of what it cost the initiative districts to build and operate the various pipeline components. Overall, the pipelines proved affordable, costing the districts on average about $5.6 million yearly, or less than 0.5 percent of their annual expenditures. This publication, which offers a set of considerations for districts interested in building principal pipelines, as well as for states that want to help localities in this work, draws from a number of sources. One of the chief ones is an independent evaluation of the implementation of the Wallace six-district effort, the Principal Pipeline Initiative, an $85-million venture launched by the foundation in 2011. Another important source is a RAND examination of the costs of pipeline construction and operation in the pipeline initiative districts. A separate RAND study, expected to be published in 2018, is exploring the pipelines' impact on schools and student performance. [For the previous edition of this Wallace Foundation "Perspective," see ED570664. For the related RAND study, see ED574749.]

School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace Foundation school leadership initiative provides insights that may offer districts a way forward, as described in this Wallace "Perspective." Most important, the research finds that it is possible for districts to put in place the four key parts of a strong principal pipeline: apt standards for principals, high-quality pre-service training, rigorous hiring procedures, and tightly aligned on-the-job performance evaluation and support. Moreover, commencing to build a pipeline can produce several swift benefits for districts and principals alike. These include principal job standards that foster a districtwide understanding of what constitutes effective leadership for local schools, a possible greater compatibility between principals and the schools to which they are assigned, and performance evaluations designed not only to measure what's important but also to help principals succeed at their very tough jobs. At the same time, the research makes clear that some elements of the pipeline are harder to construct than others. For example, it's simpler for districts to upgrade their own training programs for aspiring principals than it is to work with universities to improve university-based programs. This "Perspective" offers a set of considerations for districts interested in building principal pipelines, as well as for states that want to help localities in this work. This publication draws from a number of sources, but chiefly from an independent evaluation of the implementation of Wallace's Principal Pipeline Initiative, an $85 million venture launched by Wallace in 2011 and under way in six large school districts.

What is the state of university-based principal preparation programs? How are these essential training grounds of future school leaders viewed--by themselves as well as by the school districts that hire their graduates? Do the programs need to improve? If so, by what means? This publication seeks to help answer those questions by bringing together findings from four reports commissioned by The Wallace Foundation to inform its development of a potential new initiative regarding university-based principal training. In addition to confirming close-to-unanimous agreement among university educators and school superintendents about the important role principals play in advancing student achievement, it finds five themes: (1) District leaders are largely dissatisfied with the quality of principal preparation programs, and many universities believe that their programs have room for improvement; (2) Strong university-district partnerships are essential to high-quality preparation but are far from universal; (3) The course of study at preparation programs does not always reflect principals' real jobs; (4) Some university policies and practices can hinder change; and (5) States have authority to play a role in improving principal preparation, but many are not using this power as effectively as possible. The publication offers insight into the obstacles that stand in the way of improvement and suggests the need for action in: redesigning principal preparation by building on what we know from research and high-quality programs; establishing stronger connections between universities and districts; and ensuring that state policymakers create structures that encourage the proliferation of high-quality programs. The good news, according to the report, is that many university programs seem to be open to change--and they benefit from having a number of strong programs to look to as models. Descriptions of the 4 institutions that wrote the 4 reports that this publication draws from are appended.

These "Stories From the Field" describe five Wallace-funded programs working to expand learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children, so they can benefit from the types of opportunities their wealthier counterparts have access to, from homework help to swimming classes. The report details each program's approach, successes and challenges, offering a well-rounded picture of the effort nationally to expand learning opportunities for low-income children--and the work that remains.

A number of U.S. cities, including five supported by Wallace, have been building new systems of high-quality out-of-school time programming citywide. But what should supporters do to ensure that these young systems endure, during the immediate economic crisis and for the long term? This report on a recent Wallace-sponsored conference that gathered 108 OST system coordinators, funders, researchers and others offers possible answers to that challenge, including: forging closer ties to schools, using new data systems to inform budget decisions, and making the recession an opportunity to introduce bold changes. (Contains 3 footnotes.)