Principal Turnover in Illinois Public Schools, 2001-2008. Policy Research: IERC 2011-1

This report is the second in an Illinois Education Research Council series on public school principals in Illinois. This study focuses on principals' movements during the 2001 to 2008 time period, thereby providing recent information on principal retention and turnover during a time marked by increasing school accountability and public scrutiny of principal effectiveness. For our analyses, we focus on principal- and school-level data from state administrative records and other state and national sources for the eight years from 2001 to 2008. By piecing together annual data files across those years, we are able to track each Illinois principal from one year to the next throughout the period. We use descriptive, inferential, and multivariate analyses to determine the extent of principals' movements, as well as the personal and school-based factors that are associated with those movements. (Contains 6 tables, 6 figures and 9 footnotes.)