Principal Pipelines: What Are They and What Do They Cost?

Effective school leadership has tremendous potential to improve outcomes for students and promote excellence in schools. Indeed, a high-quality leader in just one school can potentially improve the performance of dozens of teachers and hundreds (even thousands) of students. However, despite their demonstrated potential, efforts to improve the quality of school leadership can be a tough sell for districts and states. In an era of serious resource constraints, states and districts often feel pressure to spend money directly on students or teachers. Limited information about the costs of initiatives targeting school leadership compounds these pressures and precludes districts from embarking on this work. But poor school leadership could also have a high cost. Often overlooked are the costs that districts bear when they have to repeatedly replace principals. Furthermore, the ongoing costs of poor leadership—for example, higher teacher turnover, worsening school climate conditions, and declines in student achievement—are less visible but arguably more significant than the cost of replacing school leaders.