Skip to main content
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Contact

Search form

American Institutes for Research

  • Our Work
    • Education
    • Health
    • International
    • Workforce
    • ALL TOPICS >
  • Our Services
    • Research and Evaluation
    • Technical Assistance
  • Our Experts
  • News & Events

You are here

  • Home
25 Feb 2016
Blog Post

Making ESSA Work One Principal at a Time

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) puts each state in the driver’s seat for making its own K-12 policy. But what will this mean for educational equity?

Here’s what we know: Most students from poor and low-income families attend schools that are under resourced, understaffed, and underperforming. Learning opportunities favor the affluent and perpetuate educational and economic inequalities with unfailing regularity.

Here’s what we don’t know: Will returning the hard work of providing equal education for all students to the states lead to more equal educational opportunity? Or will it further divide the nation into educational haves and have nots?

States have two choices: Go big or go small.

Either write large top-down policies and mandates hoping they find their way into schools that serve the poor or adopt a more grassroots approach, developing great school leaders, supporting teachers, and building lasting connections to communities.

We’ve tried the top-down approach, and examples of how top-down has not produced the intended results are legion. Take Michigan’s takeover of Detroit’s public schools. After six years of state control, scores on standardized math and reading assessments have plummeted so far that in 2015 Detroit students scored the lowest of any group of students in big-city school districts in the country. Detroit public schools are verging on fiscal bankruptcy after six years of state control.

Going small doesn’t mean thinking small. It means getting to the heart of what makes a school work for all students, no matter their backgrounds.

Schools are not factories or shopping malls that can be duplicated or franchised, as Mike Rose and other researchers have amply documented. Schools are intensely human organizations that rise or fall with the quality of relationships, organizational coherence, and the drive to ensure student success.

Research shows it is the principal who makes these elements come together into an effective, exciting, and inclusive learning environment. A recent study by Stanford University Professor Eric Hanushek and his colleagues found that a highly effective principal raises the achievement of a typical student by two to seven months in a single school year.

My firsthand experience confirms this finding. In the last several years, I have visited dozens of schools across the country. I have found the single most important element for creating schools that support and encourage student learning is an effective principal.

The most effective principals share similar characteristics: high energy, an almost obsessive focus on learning and student success, a deep interest in organizational purpose and cohesion,  openness and accessibility to all members of the school community, and something I call positive subversiveness—the ability to creatively engineer success, even in a traditional bureaucracy, without breaking laws or undermining ethical standards.

One highly effective principal went beyond normal requisitioning channels to get funding for musical instruments by asking for donations from parents and local businesses. Now every student who wants to play a musical instrument can, and the school has an award-winning band.

Another highly effective principal artfully ignored district hiring lists that included teachers who had poor track records of raising student learning.

And yet another successful principal established a strong connection to the community and its leadership, so that when the principal wanted to make changes that may not have aligned perfectly with the district’s policies, the community was already on board and ready to back the principal.   

A recent report by the Wallace Foundation provides convincing evidence that highly effective principals look much the same in all schools. According to the report, they all set direction, develop their people, and redesign school organization. Taken together, these three characteristics make for a cohesive strategic approach to creating school cultures that work for all students.

Devolution under ESSA affords states the chance to rethink how schools can best serve students from low-income and poor families. States must be bold, recognizing that one size does not fit all, and that real and lasting change does not come from edicts from the state capital, but rather from recruiting, hiring, developing, and supporting strong principals.

If we go small—school by school—and demand a highly effective principal in every school, we might just end up with a system of public schools capable of providing quality and equal education to all our children. 

Peter W. Cookson, Jr., is a principal researcher and director of The Equity Project at AIR. 

Related Projects

Project

The Equity Project

Educational opportunity is a cherished part of the American story of upward mobility and social justice. The Equity Project at AIR is committed to building an inclusive and vibrant future through education.

Related Work

15 Apr 2014
Video

Equity Project Research Roundtable

On April 30, 2014, AIR in Washington, D.C., hosted 28 top scholars in educational equity for the first Equity Research Roundtable.

Topic: 
Education, Equity in Education
4 Jun 2014
Blog Post

Five Big Ideas from the Equity Project Research Roundtable

On April 30, some of the top scholars in educational equity met in Georgetown for a research roundtable, in which they discussed issues in need of address by AIR’s Equity Project. This blog post summarizes the five core ideas the group outlined as a starting point for the project.
Topic: 
Education
9 Jan 2016
Podcast

EdCast: Speaking of Equity #1 - A Better Education Workforce

In this podcast, Peter Cookson talks with Education Policy Center and Center on Great Teachers and Leaders Director Angela Minnici about the importance of providing all students with access to effective teachers and school leaders. The GTL Center is currently working closely with states to design and implement State Plans to Ensure Equitable Access, including identifying the root causes of inequitable access to effective educators in each state’s context.
Topic: 
Education, Equity in Education, Principal Preparation and Performance, Teacher Preparation and Performance

Further Reading

  • Three Decades of Education Reform: Are We Still "A Nation at Risk?"
  • Implementing ESSA: What Policymakers Need to Know
  • Teacher Shortages: Top 10 Ideas from the First State ESSA Plans
  • Up for Vote #5: Rethinking the Role of Pre-K in ESEA Sequel
  • Navigating ESSA with the AIR Co-Pilot: 13 Key Resources
Share

Topic

Education
Equity in Education
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
Principal Preparation and Performance

RESEARCH. EVALUATION. APPLICATION. IMPACT.

About Us

About AIR
Board of Directors
Leadership
Experts
Clients
Contracting with AIR
Contact Us

Our Work

Education
Health
International
Workforce

Client Services

Research and Evaluation
Technical Assistance

News & Events

Careers at AIR


Search form


 

Connecting

FacebookTwitterLinkedinYouTubeInstagram

American Institutes for Research

1400 Crystal Drive, 10th Floor
Arlington, VA 22202-3289
Call: (202) 403-5000
Fax: (202) 403-5000

Copyright © 2021 American Institutes for Research®.  All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Sitemap