Professional learning powers principal impact

The Principal Effect: How Professional Growth Fuels School Success

A groundbreaking report reveals a powerful, often overlooked driver of student achievement and teacher retention: the principal's own continuous learning journey. Far from being a passive administrator, the modern school leader is emerging as the critical linchpin for transforming teaching and learning within their buildings.

Unlocking the Multiplier Effect

Research has long affirmed the significant influence principals wield over teaching quality and student outcomes. Now, a comprehensive new report, "The Principal Effect," meticulously details the mechanisms behind this impact. At its core lies a consistent, vital thread: the principal's ongoing professional learning and development.

“The principal is the ultimate multiplier” of improvement initiatives within a school, explained Ann-Marie Gleason, an elementary school principal and president-elect nominee for the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Speaking about the report's findings, Gleason, who leads Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee, emphasized how her own leadership experience validated the research.

“In my own journey as a school leader, I quickly learned that I could not personally teach every child in my building,” Gleason stated. “But what I could do was shape the conditions under which every teacher taught and every child learned.”

Shaping the Conditions for Success

research findings show, principals effectively shape these crucial conditions across three broad categories: supporting effective instruction, bolstering teacher retention, and cultivating a positive school climate. Within each of these areas, effective principals engage in a multitude of practices, many of which are integral components of high-quality professional learning.

Cultivating Excellence in Instruction

Supporting effective instruction extends far beyond individual observations and feedback sessions. It involves a strategic investment in high-quality professional learning for all staff, fostering environments where teachers can collaborate effectively, and developing shared leadership models that empower decision-making across the school.

Retaining Top Teaching Talent

Principals can significantly enhance teacher retention through the same collaborative and professional development strategies. Equally important is the creation of a safe, nurturing environment where teachers and staff feel a profound sense of belonging. Providing essential resources and unwavering support to all educators, while diligently protecting their valuable time and professional autonomy, are also key.

Research highlights that these actions can yield substantial improvements in teacher retention, particularly in high-need schools. This impact is especially pronounced in schools serving high-poverty populations or those experiencing staff instability, where consistent, supportive leadership can make a profound difference.

Building a Thriving School Community

Fostering a positive school climate, which directly influences student belonging, attendance, and academic achievement, is driven by specific principal practices. These include adopting policies that promote warm, supportive student-teacher relationships, building a community grounded in trust and welcome, establishing clear structures for family engagement, and encouraging shared decision-making processes.

Sonia E. Ruiz, the 2026 National Middle Level Principal of the Year and principal of Jane Addams Middle School in Illinois, described school climate as “the collective experience of our students, our staff, and our families. It’s how people feel when they walk through the doors each day. Are they valued, are they safe, are they connected, are they heard and supported?” She added, “A principal really plays a critical role in shaping those experiences.”

Notably, all three categories of principal practice underscore the importance of fostering teacher collaboration, promoting teachers' decision-making authority, and encouraging lifelong professional growth. These findings align directly with the Leadership standard of Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning, which defines the essential roles school and district leaders play in enabling high-quality professional learning.

The Direct Link: Principal Learning and Student Outcomes

The report's findings powerfully connect these principal-driven initiatives to tangible improvements in student achievement, teacher retention, and overall school climate. This reinforces the critical value of investing in principals as leaders of professional learning.

The report specifically notes that “principals play an important role in creating common planning time for teachers… and in establishing professional learning communities for instructional teams, both of which are associated with higher achievement growth for students.” Furthermore, principals can prioritize “professional learning opportunities for teachers that are well aligned to school goals and are positively related to greater student achievement growth.”

When Principals Grow, Students Thrive

The positive outcomes associated with effective principal actions are not accidental. The research review demonstrates that high-quality professional learning for principals directly translates into increased effectiveness and the successful implementation of strategies that benefit students, teachers, and the entire school.

Students whose principals have greater access to ongoing professional learning exhibit higher gains in both English language arts and mathematics. This effect is particularly pronounced for students of color from historically underserved communities. One study cited in the report found that students whose principals engaged in extensive instructional leadership professional learning outperformed their peers in math by a margin equivalent to four months of additional instruction.

Remarkably, math gains were even more significant in schools led by early-career principals who had participated in extensive professional learning, surpassing those in schools led by more senior principals with similar learning experiences. The report emphasizes that since principal experience often correlates with higher student growth, “access to intensive professional development can help close the gap in learning for both new principals and their students.” This finding alone presents a compelling argument for prioritizing investment in principal professional learning.

Stemming the Tide of Principal Turnover

High-quality professional learning for principals also plays a crucial role in reducing principal turnover, a persistent challenge facing many schools across the nation. “Typically, when principals leave, teacher attrition increases and student achievement declines,” stated Linda Darling-Hammond, chief knowledge officer at the Learning Policy Institute and lead author of the report.

Darling-Hammond pointed to research indicating that student test scores and growth tend to decrease after a principal's departure, with impacts that can linger for up to five years. Stable leadership is intrinsically linked to stable staffing, which in turn has a profound and positive effect on student outcomes.

The Pillars of Effective Principal Learning

The research review identifies two fundamental dimensions that shape the impact of principal professional learning: content and process. These elements work in tandem to equip principals with the skills and knowledge they need to lead effectively.

High-Leverage Content

The content of effective professional learning for principals should encompass critical areas such as leading and supporting instruction, improving school climate and culture, developing and supporting teachers and staff, and addressing the diverse, whole-child needs of students. These are precisely the elements captured within Learning Forward’s Professional Expertise and Learning Foundations standards.

Meaningful Process Components

Crucial process components include applied learning opportunities that directly address real-world problems of practice. This can involve internships, dedicated coaching and mentoring relationships, and active participation in ongoing learning cohorts and professional networks. The report specifically highlights that “the mentoring or coaching component of (systemic professional learning initiatives) appears to be particularly important.”

Multiple studies confirm that mentoring and coaching are associated with a wide array of positive outcomes for students, teachers, and schools. These benefits include stronger instructional leadership, more effective teacher feedback, enhanced community building, improved data-driven decision-making, and ultimately, greater student achievement. These findings are consistent with meta-analytic reviews that connect professional learning components outlined in the Standards for Professional Learning to improved student outcomes.

The Compelling Case for Investment

The evidence presented in "The Principal Effect" makes an undeniable case for investing in the professional learning of principals. Darling-Hammond articulated this clearly during the webinar, stating, “We see a lot of efforts to try to address [many persistent educational] problems, often individually, as though they are entirely unconnected. But there is a unifying factor that can influence all of these things, and it is the support for and investment in the school leader.”

The urgency for such investment is underscored by data from the National Principal Survey, which indicates that “access to high leverage learning is relatively rare.” Less than half of principals surveyed had participated in an internship before assuming their full-time role, and only about a third had opportunities to observe other principals in action.

A more recent report on the principal professional learning landscape in the U.S. by Jason Grissom and colleagues found that approximately half of principals feel they lack sufficient access to professional learning. They report limited opportunities to learn about critical areas identified by Darling-Hammond’s report as vital for student outcomes, including building staff collaboration and establishing a safe, productive, and positive school climate.

Addressing these critical gaps is an immediate necessity. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues propose several policy solutions, such as covering the costs of high-quality pre-service programs and paid internships, creating structured opportunities for coaching, mentoring, and networking, and developing robust, research-informed principal pipelines.

Furthermore, Learning Forward recommends that the federal government increase the allowable set-aside for principals within Title II-A, the primary federal funding stream for professional learning. In the interim, educational systems are encouraged to leverage the existing 3% set-aside, actively support principals' participation in learning communities, and integrate principal support as a core component of district strategic plans.

It should no longer be a surprise that the professional learning of principals, and their subsequent support for teachers' learning, directly impacts school and student outcomes. Now, with clear insights into how to ensure that learning is highly effective, we possess a powerful combination for supporting and amplifying the critical role of the school principal.