Successful Leaders for Successful Schools: Building and Maintaining a Quality Workforce

Increasingly, funders and developers of school leadership programs are articulating talent development frameworks, or leadership development pipelines, that conceive of school leadership development as identifying, recruiting, developing, monitoring, compensating, and retaining talented school leaders. However, states’ systems to support leadership development have received relatively scant attention and resources. This gap spurred NASBE in partnership with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) to examine the problem from a state policy perspective; to offer a framework, guidance, and resources to help states develop and keep effective leaders; provide examples of promising practices for rural schools; and share insights from partner organizations. This report details the Leadership Study Group’s recommendations.

A companion piece, State Leadership Development Policies—An Analysis of 50 States and Territories, presents school leadership development policies and practices across all 50 states and select U.S. territories. Researchers Bobbi Newman, Jonathan Supovitz, and Greg Collins from CPRE, in collaboration with NASBE staff, interviewed state board members and staff members from state education agencies to learn about their states’ school leadership development policies and practices and identify the organizational and individual supports that states have established. This new analysis provides a wealth of information for state leaders interested in learning about promising policies and programs across the country that support the school leadership pipeline.