Principals in the United States are faced with challenging and complex roles as the leaders of our schools. Levels of district, state, and federal mandates and accountability measures coupled with the demands of supporting students, parents, and teachers on a multitude of levels create a job that is almost impossible to keep up with. In addition,…

Although a growing body of research on principal turnover and retention exists in the United States, researchers have conducted very few studies in Canada (Pollock & Hauseman, 2016). Therefore, the purpose of this single embedded case study is to investigate principal turnover and retention in socially vulnerable elementary schools in one…

Individuals working in school settings are particularly vulnerable to work-related stress. Data from the 2013 Gallup-Health-ways Well-Being Index found that 46% of teachers in K-12 settings report high levels of daily stress (Lever et al., 2017). About 40% of Black or African American teachers were considering leaving their jobs, compared with…

According to Garcia and Weiss (2019), students in high-poverty and high-minority schools typically feel the largest impact of teacher shortages. The aim and objective of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine the factors that contribute to the teacher shortage in high-poverty schools and analyze how these factors are being…

The significance of the role of school administrator has been shown in recent years to be second only to the influence of the classroom teacher in terms of increasing student achievement and improving the climate and culture of a school. In recent years, teachers and administrators alike have been leaving the educational profession in large…

We study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the pandemic was not a low point: teacher working conditions have…

Research shows that school functioning and student achievement often suffer when effective principals leave their schools and that principal retention is related to the conditions they experience in five areas: working conditions, compensation, accountability, decision-making authority, and professional learning. A recent NASSP-LPI study examined…

Strong and stable school leadership is critical for success in schools across the nation. The duties of the principal are many and varied. Principals, for example, can oversee instruction, purchase curricular materials and supplies, and provide professional learning and supports for teachers. Carrying out these duties effectively makes a…

The author profiles two women principals of color who have successfully enhanced student learning in high-poverty schools. In their leadership narratives, the principals address how the complexity of poverty affects their work, how they affirm the worth and dignity of all, how they influence beliefs and attitudes of staff, why they think their…

This review aims to demonstrate that a great deal of a school's success depends on which areas of school life the educational leader chooses to spend time and attention on. It calls for more research and policy attention to be given to the career paths of school principals in order to meet the challenge of identifying and developing the next…

Schools in 47 high-poverty school districts located mostly along the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia may have a head start on new requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, thanks to a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Begun in April 2000, the five-year Coastal Rural Systemic…