Principals’ Reports of Leadership Practices: Using the Urban Excellence Framework as a Guide for School Improvement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Improving Our Understanding of School Leadership: Using the Urban Excellence Framework for Research and Practice

Abstract

Using a rigorous value-added model developed and run by Mathematica Policy Research, the leaders of the EPIC project identified high-gain schools compared to all schools in two urban districts (Washington, DC and Memphis, TN) and in a set of 381 charter schools across the country. The EPIC staff collected detailed narratives from the schools’ principals over five years (2007-2012), including descriptions of leadership strategies, curricular and instructional processes, and specific activities that school leaders believed contributed to their high-gain status.
In a separate project, New Leaders (2012) developed the Urban Excellence Framework (UEF)—a tool that outlines, in detail, the components of an excellent school organization. This paper brings these projects together by using the reports from principals on practices that they believed were important for their schools’ success to test the validity of the UEF as a useful guide for improving any school.

Authors

• Darcy Hutchins, Colorado Department of Education

• Joyce L. Epstein, Johns Hopkins University

• Steven B. Sheldon, Johns Hopkins University