The Wallace Foundation has released its seminal research report, How Do Principals Affect Students and Schools: A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research (Feb 2021). As a national independent foundation, with a $1.6 billion endowment, Wallace has been heavily engaged in 20-years of principal research and freely sharing evidence-based lessons on school leadership (among other areas) as a part of their mission to “foster improvement and enrichment for marginalized children”. The primary purpose of the research report was to synthesize what has been learned about the relationship between school leadership and student achievement and other outcomes as well (e.g., student attendance and chronic absenteeism). While principals are second only to teachers in terms of in-school factors impacting student achievement, one key take-away from the research findings emphasizes that the importance of principals is not stated strongly enough as there is strong evidence that having an effective principal contributes substantially to student achievement. To access the full research report visit the Wallace Foundation Knowledge Center at: How Principals Affect Students and Schools (wallacefoundation.org).
