Years of research suggest that principals can have a significant impact on student achievement. Now, a major new study quantifies just how much of a difference an effective principal can make! According to the study’s authors, while effective principals are skilled in instruction, people, and organizations, they also engage in a series of behaviors that set them apart from other educational leaders.

Grissom, Egalite, and Lindsay (2021) conducted this systematic synthesis of 20 years of school leadership research. They state that “Principals really matter. Indeed, given not just the magnitude but the scope of principal effects, which are felt across a potentially large student body and faculty in a school, it is difficult to envision an investment with a higher ceiling on its potential return than a successful effort to improve principal leadership.” 

This article describes the study and explores what those behaviors are. It also discusses the demographics of the profession, and how those may impact student achievement as well as teacher performance and retention.

And this article provides a link to the study itself, and makes the case that an effective principal’s impact is much stronger and broader than previously thought.