Priming the Leadership Pipeline: School Performance and Culture Under an Urban School Leadership Residency Program

Abstract

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Distributing Instructional Leadership: Implementation Lessons from an Urban School Leadership Residency Program

“…These efforts took the form of coaching teachers and helping them improve, counseling out those who did not improve, and creating resources to help teachers succeed. In broad terms, residents' perceptions of their own impacts aligned with our quantitative estimates from the larger study showing that schools exposed to a higher number of residents over time improved their mathematics scale scores and graduation rates relative to comparable schools (Steele, Steiner, & Hamilton, 2018). In contrast, that analysis found no relationship between schools' resident exposure and teacher-reported measures of school culture, and it found a positive relationship to chronic absence and suspension rates (Steele, Steiner, & Hamilton, 2018).…”

“…In a companion paper, we examined whether schools' exposure to PLUS residents was associated with their performance over time (Steele, Steiner, & Hamilton, 2018). Using schoolby-year data from across the state, and employing school fixed-effects models that relied on within-school changes over time, we found that each resident-by-year in an administrative role was associated with an additional 14% of a school-level standard deviation in mathematics scale scores, 10% of a school-level standard deviation in ELA scale scores, and 2.5 percentage points in four-year graduation rates.…”

“…Readers should nevertheless bear in mind that the city's context is unique, and the way the PLUS program is implemented in any given city is highly sensitive to the local and state context. This analysis also serves as a companion to our aforementioned quantitative study of the schoolwide achievement, attainment, behavior, and culture associated with schools' exposure to PLUS residents (Steele, Steiner, & Hamilton, 2018).…”