Measuring the Impacts of School Principals

Abstract

As school leaders, K-12 principals have important and wide-ranging roles in ensuring the overall functioning of their schools. Research has found, for instance, that principals impact student achievement and teacher retention (Boyd et al., 2010; Dhuey et al., 2017). Through analysis of schools in Miami-Dade County Public School District that experienced a leadership transition between 2009 and 2017, I investigate whether principals impact other school-level outcomes. A unique data set, that combines administrative and survey-based data, was used to examine important yet rarely researched school outcomes including school grade, average student attendance, perceptions of school safety, perceptions of school maintenance, perceptions of effective school leadership, and perceptions of positive school culture. My findings indicate a significant principal-effect for each of these school outcomes besides student attendance.