Building Bench Strength

Leadership succession becomes a priority for districts intent on keeping the talent pipeline flowing

Plenty of school districts can identify with the frustration experienced in Tulsa, Okla. “Every time there was turnover, there was little preparation,” says Talia Shaull, the district’s chief human capital officer.

Tulsa’s leadership realized that to improve the academic standing of 39,000 students, they had to figure out how to develop principal talent. “We understood and learned from research that the school leader is the anchor that sets the vision and leads the team,” says Shaull.

It’s no secret that teaching and learning thrives in school systems that create stability and strength in the site leadership ranks. The principal’s role has been further elevated with the implementation of Common Core standards and an emphasis on continuous improvement.

The Wallace Foundation, based in New York City, has been a major force behind the campaign to raise the floor of what it means to be an effective instructional leader in the schoolhouse.

“There’s no evidence of a school ever turning around without an effective principal,” contends Jody Spiro, director of education leadership at the foundation, which funded an $80 million Principal Pipeline initiative in 2011 to provide six urban districts with the resources to identify and develop talent. (Wallace has partnered with AASA on this program.) “That’s why it matters. Principals are the major drivers of school performance and student achievement.”

Cohort Training

That’s a lesson Tulsa took to heart. While the district had been working on a teacher effectiveness initiative since 2010, Shaull says the focus shifted toward principals a few years later under a 2014 Wallace-supported initiative to develop principal supervisors. Tulsa’s two-year program is designed to develop principal supervisors through executive coaching and other practices.

Tulsa puts the nine participants in its current cohort, most of them site administrators with no less than five years on the job, through 1½ days of joint training each month and expects them to work on their own another four to eight hours each week to mentor novice principals and take on training tasks assigned by central administration.

The early results have been promising. The district had been averaging 17 principal departures a year, but this year experienced only six principal vacancies, its lowest total during the past eight years.

Targeted Development

Other school districts in the Wallace program have put their own stamp on leadership succession. Some identify excellent teachers who show promise of becoming assistant principals. Others drill down on the key role of principal supervisor, Spiro says, to determine whether offering stronger support to principals, especially in the area of improving instruction, will make a difference to the entire district.

Several Wallace-funded districts devote most of their resources to the selection and training processes before the candidates move into their new roles. These programs provide ongoing support to the fledgling leaders from coaches and mentors. They use unexpected situations that arise as learning opportunities.

One of the most ambitious programs is the Principal Pipeline initiative in the Gwinnett County Public Schools, just outside Atlanta. The nation’s 14th largest district, Gwinnett educates more than 174,000 students in 134 schools. Principal Pipeline candidates explore educational concerns and specific challenges site administrators face, while tackling more corporate concepts of leadership. (See related story.)

The Wallace Foundation’s Spiro says some of the common elements found among the forward-thinking districts addressing succession are (a) structured, systematic identification, (b) training and (c) ongoing support.

On-the-Job Skills

In Hillsborough County, Fla., based in Tampa, the nation’s eighth-largest district has developed a comprehensive leadership tracking system to generate a well-prepared talent pool for the roles of assistant principal and principal. To stay ahead of the needs in its 255 schools, the district convenes its principals for a formal succession-planning process three times a year, enabling the human resources department to project vacancies six months out.

Hillsborough’s Future Leaders Academy trains teachers who are aspiring assistant principals, according to Tricia McManus, director of leadership development in the 212,600-student district. The six-month program requires the candidates demonstrate their skills in specific competencies that the district considers essential for the administrative roles, such as instructional expertise, relationship building, and managing and developing people, among others.

The job-embedded experiences are supervised by principals.

Assistant principals looking to move up a step to become principals undergo two hours of interviews and role-playing. At the end of the two-year preparation program, Preparing New Principals, the would-be principals need to present their 90-day entry plan to the selection committee, describing what they would do to improve student and teacher performance to become part of the future principal pool.

To find the best-fit candidates for vacancies, Hillsborough uses the leader selection tool Ed Connect. Through this software, the district can post vacancy notices with specific requirements, such as a high school principal with strengths in relationship building and developing teacher talent.

These measures, McManus says, have contributed to noticeable improvements in “the caliber of our candidates. … We see a definite change in the level of performance for our principals.” Once the new principals are in place, they’re assigned a veteran principal as a coach and mentor for the first two years on the job.

Building a Bench

Looking at the longer horizon as a way to identify and develop a deeper talent pool has been the philosophy in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, a district of 146,000 students in 168 schools.

The district strategy “hangs our hat on human capital as a way to improve outcomes for kids,” says Ann Clark, district superintendent and a former national principal of the year. “We realized we needed to build our bench when we realized we didn’t have the people we needed when vacancies occurred.”

Much of their work focuses on identifying candidates who would be ready for new challenges and responsibilities within one or two years, as well as those who could serve as interim substitutes in particular situations.

“Through Wallace, we’ve built out the whole selection process during the past five years,” Clark says.

The comprehensive process includes pre--service training and initial recruitment for assistant principal and principal positions as well as a clear commitment to supporting new leaders upon their appointments.

The five-year program for principals connects leaders with a professional learning community, partners with local universities for specific training and uses current principals as coaches and mentors.

Some of the skills and competencies leaders are expected to demonstrate in Charlotte-Mecklenburg include a belief in children’s ability to achieve; strategic decision making and problem solving; managing and developing staff; and knowing best instructional practice.

Jevelyn Bonner-Reed, director of strategic initiatives in the district, says the program is helping people get up to speed more quickly. The goal, she says, “is to retain the best people and not lose people because they don’t feel supported.”

The district expects its leaders to be engaged in change management, always with a relentless focus on improving the academic and educational experience for students. The first two years of a principal’s job is very much about “getting their arms around that role,” says Bonner-Reed, with regular meetings with their coaches and cohort to address student achievement and focus on time management.

By the third year, working with Queens University of Charlotte, “it’s about making the changes they need to make,” she says, and in the fourth year, “it’s about the need to push the limits and what you need to get to the next level. By year five, it’s more introspective. Are you the leader you want to be? What do you want to change? How can you be the best?”

John M. LeGrand, principal at David W. Butler High School, considers his district’s principal induction program “critical to my ability to learn about and navigate the very complicated role of the principal.” In addition to acquiring the support and skills he needed as a novice principal, LeGrand said he benefitted from “making connections with other beginning principals that I greatly value to this day.”

He adds: “The importance of networking and learning together with others at that point in the principalship cannot be overstated.”

Other programs in North Carolina’s second-largest district include the Principal Professional Learning Community, targeting high-achieving, more experienced principals; a leader tracking system, an online tool for data-driven decision making; a principal supervisors initiative; and the Aspiring Leaders Program, in partnership with Teach for America, to help high-potential teachers explore executive-level careers in the district.

The Multiplier Effect

To have as large an impact as possible, 269,000-student Broward County, headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, has concentrated on the role of the principal supervisor, or cadre director. The district employs 11 cadre directors to work with 228 principals.

Superintendent Robert Runcie says it is “not optional” to have a great leader at each school. “Great teachers aspire to work with great principals. You have to make sure you have the structures in place,” he adds.

The cadre directors are responsible for supporting the district’s primary goals through their work with principals — improving the high school graduation rate and reducing the dropout rate; improving access to classes in coding and computer science; increasing AP course enrollment; and raising achievement of Latino students. The achievement gap between black and white students has been narrowed to 5 percent districtwide.

Runcie appoints six experienced current principals to step into this role. While these principals are cadre directors, the district taps six promising assistant principals to fill in as principals in those schools. That, in turn, means teachers eager to become assistant principals have a chance to step up to that job.

“It’s real-world performance,” Runcie says. “The assistant principal knows the principal will return to the school.”

The district is seeing tangible benefits.

“We’re expanding learning opportunities,” Runcie explains. “We’re continuing to invest in ways to make the model of assistant principal to principal to principal supervisor, where we build, identify and develop talent, sustainable.”
As these districts have learned, grooming new leaders can’t be left to luck.

“Succession planning needs to be systematic, not reactive when someone leaves,” says David Schuler, AASA president and superintendent in Arlington Heights, Ill. “If you’re not creating structures and systems to promote internally, you’re sending a message that you’re not supporting and empowering your teachers.”