At a Glance

Principal leadership development in rural schools leads to a variety of positive changes related to principal and teacher turnover, principal efficacy, leadership, and principal perception of collaboration among staff, and stronger norms for differentiating instruction, although not student achievement.

The Study

Jacob, R., Goddard, R., Kim, M., Miller, R., & Goddard, Y. (2015, September). Exploring the causal impact of the McREL Balanced Leadership program on leadership, principal efficacy, instructional climate, educator turnover, and student achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(3), 314-332.

What This Means For Practitioners 

This study highlights the complexity of change in schools. Strengthening leadership practices of principals alone is unlikely to produce sweeping changes in teacher practice or student achievement. It also raises questions about the program design, the time restrictions of funded studies, and data use.

Several features of the program align with the Standards for Professional Learning, yet attention to all the standards is unknown. For example, the Balanced Leadership program content aligned with core practices of principals, standards of performance used in many school systems and states, and confirmed in the research (Outcomes standard), yet it is unclear how well the content aligned with the specific performance expectations for principals of the schools selected and the needs of the school systems, teachers, students, and communities.

The program engages participants in cohorts (Learning Designs), yet it is unknown how often participants actively engaged in the learning and whether the learning designs emphasized behavioral rehearsals to accelerate application.

While the program was free to participants (Resources standard), it is unknown if participants perceived a need for change in their leadership practice (Data standard), received implementation support and feedback throughout the program (Implementation standard), or if their supervisors advocated changes in their practice and provided the appropriate conditions and culture for success (Leadership standard).

It is also unclear if the participants and their supervisors were committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and alignment of expectations and accountability for success with program participation (Learning Communities standard).

The timeline for change in this research study raises questions about time for implementation and impact to occur before collecting completion data. Unreasonable timelines such as the one in this study are often the result of strict time restrictions for funded studies.

This study is a good example of the long journey of change and the intensity of reform required to generate results for students. It describes a program designed to develop principal capacity. It is one aspect of what must become a multilayered change program, one that includes efforts to improve the efficacy beliefs and practices of principals as well as teachers and school system staff.

It also requires reprioritizing commitments, expectations, and resources to generate high-leverage changes in instruction, curriculum, assessment, and professional learning. Had this program been folded into a comprehensive reform effort with opportunities to develop all staff, provide adequate resources and support for implementation of new learning, and accountability for results, the results might have been different.

Overall, while the study measures the impact of the Balanced Leadership program and provides a solid investigation design for assessing the impact of professional development, its design isolates a small number of factors from the complex constellation of factors that contribute to change in schools and student achievement.