The Principal Supervisor Initiative: Changing Cultures and Changing Roles of Principal Supervision in Urban Districts

• In Event: Filling a Critical Leadership Gap: Developing Principal Instructional Leadership Through Principal Supervision

Abstract

Objective
In 2014, the Wallace Foundation initiated the multi-year Principal Supervisor Initiative (PSI) to redefine principal supervision. The goal was to overhaul a position traditionally focused on bureaucratic compliance to one dedicated to developing and supporting principals to improve instruction. This paper presents results of the initiative, exploring whether and how principal supervisors can be a point of leverage for supporting and developing principals.

Framework
The PSI included five components implemented across six urban districts: (1) Revising the principal supervisors’ job description to focus on instructional leadership; (2) Reducing principal supervisors’ span of control and assigning supervisors to principals; (3) Training supervisors and developing their capacity to support principals; (4) Developing systems to identify and train new supervisors to address succession planning; and, (5) Strengthening central office structures to support and sustain changes in the principal supervisor role.

Methodology
Six urban districts were selected to participate in the Wallace Foundation’s Principal Supervisor initiative: Baltimore, Broward County, Cleveland, Des Moines, Long Beach, and Minneapolis. During 2015 and 2016, the team conducted interviews in each district with two central office staff, six principal supervisors, and ten randomly sampled principals. In total, the research team conducted 219 interviews across the six-PSI districts. Analyses followed the constant comparative method (Patton, 2001) and employed both inductive and deductive coding and analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to yield rich descriptions of patterns and themes that emerged from the interview data.

Additionally, all principals and supervisors in the six-PSI districts completed surveys in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. Response rates for all districts ranged from 80% to 100%.

Results
The paper presents deep descriptions of the principal supervisors’ roles in working directly with principals. In the six PSI districts supervisors spent the majority of their time in schools and sixty-eight percent of their time on instructional leadership. Supervisors engaged in a common set of practices (e.g., walkthroughs) and providing ongoing feedback to principals; supervisors supported and evaluated principals based on a firsthand sense of the context of each principal’s school. Principals reported productive relations with their supervisors.

Role change was the result of ongoing efforts including revising job descriptions and reducing the number of principals each supervisor oversees from 17 to 12. Supervisors received dedicated training to develop job-specific skills, often involving shared visits to schools where supervisors observed each other coaching and providing feedback. Supervisors collaborated to develop common practices. To support this new role, other central office roles and responsibilities shifted and were reallocated, and some departments were reorganized.

Ongoing challenges included clarifying the new roles, deepening and further developing effective practices for supervisors, and investing other central office departments in the change.

Significance
This paper contributes to ongoing discussions of district reform and examines principal supervision as a lever for school improvement. The paper discusses the conditions for change in the role and the relationship between district context and role change. Paramount to this change and discussed in the paper is the importance of a common understanding of instructional leadership between supervisors and principals.

Authors

• Ellen B. Goldring, Vanderbilt University

• Jason A. Grissom, Vanderbilt University

• Mollie Rubin, Vanderbilt University

• Michael Alan Neel, Vanderbilt University