Investing in Leadership: The District's Role in Managing Principal Turnover

Abstract

This article presents the results of research into the impact of principal turnover on schools, and the ability of schools to mitigate the negative effects of frequent turnover by distributing leadership in the schools. The findings from this qualitative and quantitative analysis show that rapid principal turnover does indeed have a negative effect on a school, primarily affecting the school culture. Where there is high principal turnover, taking a coordinated approach to leadership distribution appears to mitigate at least some of the negative consequences of leadership turnover.

This paper presents results from a much larger, five-year mixed-methods study funded by the Wallace Foundation, inquiring about the nature of successful state, district and school-level leadership and how such leadership influenced improvements in student learning. An earlier version of this paper appeared in the final report of the larger study, Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning (Louis, Leithwood, et al., 2010).