Cultivating Talent through a Principal Pipeline. Building a Stronger Principalship: Volume 2

This second report of an ongoing evaluation of "The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative" describes the six participating school districts' activities in school leader preparation and support and analyzes their progress over two years. The evaluation, conducted by "Policy Studies Associates" and the "RAND Corporation," is intended to inform policy makers and practitioners about the process of implementing policies and practices for school leadership and about the results of investments in the Principal Pipeline Initiative. This report is based on collection and analysis of qualitative data, including semi-structured interviews in spring 2013 with 113 administrators in districts and partner institutions, and surveys of novice principals and assistant principals. Districts are following grant requirements. For leader preparation, all are initiating or strengthening partnerships with external programs, and five of the six have also bolstered district-run programs. The district programs and varying numbers of external preparation programs are showing the desired features: selective admissions, standards-based content, problem-based learning, cohort models, and clinical experience. To support novice leaders, all districts have coaching arrangements of varying duration, and all have brought in assistance to build the capacity of coaches, mentors, and supervisors. The report also contains the Appendix: An Exploratory Comparative Analysis. [For Volume 1 in this series, see ED555867; for Volume 3, see ED555869.]