Using State-Level Policy Levers to Promote Principal Quality: Lessons from Seven States Partnering with Principal Preparation Programs and Districts. RAND Principal Preparation Series. Volume 2. Research Report. RR-A413-1

State policymakers, including state leaders, districts, and professional associations, play a role in fostering an environment that supports the development of effective school principals, with the broad policy objective of achieving high principal quality across the state. This report examines how seven states use state policy levers to advance policy change to improve the quality of school principals. These states are all actively engaging in a collaborative initiative focused on principal preparation program redesign. All seven states in the study were part of The Wallace Foundation's University Principal Preparation Initiative (UPPI). Launched in 2016, UPPI is supporting seven university-based principal preparation programs to work in collaboration with their district and state partners to redesign and improve the programs to better support the development of effective principals. The UPPI programs and their respective states are: (1) Albany State University (Georgia); (2) Florida Atlantic University (Florida); (3) North Carolina State University (North Carolina); (4) San Diego State University (California); (5) the University of Connecticut (Connecticut); (6) Virginia State University (Virginia); and (7) Western Kentucky University (Kentucky). This report focuses on seven policy levers that states can use to improve school leadership: (1) setting principal standards; (2) recruiting aspiring principals into the profession; (3) licensing new and veteran principals (4) approving and overseeing principal preparation programs; (5) supporting principals' growth with professional development; (6) evaluating principals and (7) using leader tracking systems to support analysis of aspiring and established school leaders' experiences and outcomes. The report concludes with two appendixes. [For Appendix B, see ED609669. For Volume 1, see ED590580.]