A Review of the Literature

The Integrated Leadership Development Initiative (ILDI) is a cross-agency partnership that focuses on collaboratively guiding and supporting leader development and improving conditions of leadership so that there are highly accomplished leaders in every district and school in California. ILDI members include is the Director of the Leadership Initiative at WestEd, formerly the California School Leadership Academy. Kearney directs all aspects of the initiative, which focuses on the role of principals, superintendents, and teacher leaders in comprehensive school restructuring. teaches and conducts state-level policy research about standards, accountability , and professionalization in educational leadership. She directed the coalition of states in developing the national Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008 (CSSSO, 2008) and writing the ISLLC 2008-Based Performance Expectations and Indicators for Education Leaders (CSSSO, 2008) to guide leadership policies and programs. where he supervises the fieldwork of future school administrators and is Assistant Director of the Great Leaders for Great Schools Academy. Introduction The call for improved student achievement—or else—has led politicians and educators to look, once again, at principal effectiveness as a critical lever in transforming education results. Under federal policies such as No Child Left Behind and now the President's Blueprint for Reform and Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIG) competitions, a principal's job security rests squarely upon his or her success in promoting and sustaining acceptable levels of student academic achievement. A school's persistent underperformance on student achievement tests puts the principal at risk of being dismissed, demoted, or transferred. These pressures raise important questions regarding the effect of a principal's behaviors and leadership practices on enhancing teacher performance, increasing student learning, and improving academic achievement results. For school district superintendents, the new policy environment magnifies the importance of being able to accurately, effectively, and fairly assess the level of a principal's performance. Principals, in turn, need clear expectations and standards for leadership performance; fair, consistent, timely, and reliable performance assessments; and assessment procedures and practices that rate the quality of leadership performance while providing useful feedback for professional growth and development. What do we know about principal evaluation systems that meet these needs? Feedback from practitioners and university scholars suggests that effective systems of principal evaluation are certain to exist among the approximately 14,500 school districts across the country. However, identifying specific districts with strong principal evaluation systems or accessing substantive and comprehensive information about such systems is very difficult. Further, while some …