Principal Evaluations and the Principal Supervisor: Survey Results from the Great City Schools

Principals serve as both instructional and administrative leaders in their schools. Their roles and responsibilities vary from managing school compliance issues to facilitating and assisting teachers with their instructional duties. In order to support principals in public schools, district leaders and others are working to build the kinds of professional development, organizational structures, and supports principals need. Moreover, big city school systems and others continue to debate how to evaluate and hold principals accountable for achieving results. In the fall of 2012, the Council of the Great City Schools received a grant from the Wallace Foundation to investigate the ways principals are supported and evaluated in large urban school districts and districts that participate in the Wallace leadership initiative. This involves taking a closer look at the roles and responsibilities of principal supervisors--defined here as individuals who directly oversee and/or evaluate the performance of principals. This interim report summarizes the results of a survey administered to district staff in these positions in the fall of 2012. These results will be followed up with a second report detailing the findings of extensive site visits to the six districts participating in the Wallace Principal Pipeline project. This report does not provide recommendations or identify best practices, but seeks to present an overview of the ways districts support the critical work performed by principals and their supervisors. Districts where surveys were received from are appended. (Contains 16 figures, 10 tables, and 2 footnotes.)