Drawing from the lessons learned from working with more than two dozen states and scores of districts, the Wallace Foundation framed the concept of a “cohesive leadership system” that holds the potential for helping advanced and sustain the development of leadership that benefits the learning of all students.

A Wallace perspective describes the core elements of a systemwide, coordinated approach to connecting state, district, and school policies and practices – standards, training, and conditions and incentives. Click the provided links to see elements of Cohesive Leadership System and/or to download The Wallace Foundation Perspective on Leadership for Learning: Making the Connections Among State, District and School Policies and Practices.

In essence, the ultimate impact of leadership across states and districts rests on the quality of their systems in screening, selecting, preparing, and supporting principal candidates. The research base that policymakers have available to inform their decisions about designing effective systems has grown substantially in recent years. For example, in 2007, the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute released the report, Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs. The authors found that exemplary pre- and in-service programs that offered varied approaches and operated in different contexts share common program elements that are linked to critical differences in principals’ attitudes, knowledge, skills, practices, and levels of success. The report describes these important features of effective preparation programs and underscores the role of states in framing coherent systems that leverage high-quality training and supports to ensure principals have the knowledge and skills to drive powerful teaching and learning.