The New York City Aspiring Principals Program: A School-Level Evaluation

Abstract

New York suffers from a persistent shortage of principals. The Leadership Academy - an independent, not-for-profit organization - represents the centerpiece of New York City’s attempts to expand its principal labor pool while at the same time increasing the autonomy and day-to-day responsibilities of its school leaders. In particular, the Leadership Academy seeks to prepare principals for schools marked by high student poverty, low achievement and frequent staff turnover - schools in which principal vacancies had been historically hard to fill. Aspiring Principals (APP), the Leadership Academy’s pre-service principal preparation program, is a 14-month intensive program involving three components. This report represents the first systematic comparison of student outcomes in schools led by APP graduates after three years to those in comparable schools led by other new principals. We provide both a straightforward comparison of average achievement in these two groups of schools, and in efforts to isolate a potential program effect, we conduct a formal regression analysis that accounts for pre-existing differences in student performance and characteristics. We also report key differences between the school leaders themselves and the schools in which they were placed. All principals in this study were installed in 2004-05 or 2005-06, remained in the same school for three or more consecutive years, and led their school through the 2007-08 school year.