The Principal Effect: A Key Strategy for Tackling Today's School Challenges

So, welcome. Um, thank you so much for being here today. Um, we're super excited about today's webinar. We're going to be hearing from one of the country's most distinguished scholars on teaching and school leadership, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. She's a founding CEO and the current CKO, which is the chief knowledge officer, of the Learning Policy Institute. Linda's going to share highlights from LPI's recent report, which is called The Principal Effect, a key strategy for tackling today's school challenges. We're also privileged to hear from two distinguished school leaders, Ann Marie Gleeson, principal of Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee, and she's the president-elect of the National Association for Elementary School Principals, and also Sonya Ruiz, who's the principal of the Jane Addams Middle School in the Valley View Community Unit School District, which is outside of Chicago. She was recently named the National Association of Secondary School Principals 2026 Middle Level or Middle School Principal of the Year. We're super excited to have them both here. So, my name's Bronwyn Bevan. I'm the vice president of research at The Wallace Foundation. I've been here for about 7 years. But as many of you know, for over 20 years, The Wallace Foundation has been working with districts from across the country to strengthen and also to learn about how to strengthen systems of support for school leaders. This work, along with the work of many of you and many others, has over the past 20 years produced a great deal of evidence about the important role that school leaders play in school and student outcomes and experiences, and as well as the ways in which they can best be prepared and supported to lead with equity and and for impact. But despite this research, we continue to see many extremely exciting, innovative, important school improvement efforts being undertaken without close consideration of how school leaders can and must must be involved and supported to be involved in order to see to the successful implementation of any improvement effort that's going to take place in any school building. So, we at Wallace, uh were honored uh about a year ago, I think, to support Linda and her colleagues at LPI to produce this report that we're going to hear about today. It looks at decades of evidence to lift up how principals are pivotal to many of the most pressing challenges that schools are facing today. The key message is that principals matter profoundly. And if you want to drive from point A to point B, you need to fill up or or charge up your car. Principals are the fuel and the engine that keeps the car moving, keeps the school moving towards um positive outcomes for all. Not all school improvement efforts and investments reflect what the research evidence is loud and clear about. Principals need to be part of any solution, and we hope that that will change over time, that awareness and use of the evidence. So, now just a quick word about how we're going to organize this webinar. Um we're going to have about 15 minutes for Q&A after we hear from our three speakers. Um but please, anytime, feel free to enter your questions into the Q&A section, um which is there's a button at the bottom of your screen. It either says Q&A or there's a button that says more, and you should find Q&A in that button. Um and in case we run out of time at the end, I just want to quickly thank in advance our friends at Hatcher, at NAESP, and NASSP for helping us to organize this webinar, and of course the wonderful communications teams from LPI and the Wallace Foundation for their guidance, help, and ideation around all of this. So, with that, um let me introduce our first speaker, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. So, it's hard to know where to start when introducing Linda. Um I know she's going to bring up her slides as I'm talking. Um Linda was the You can correct me if I say anything wrong. Um Linda was the founding CEO, as I said, of Learning Policy Institute, and where she's currently chief knowledge officer. She's a professor at Stanford University for many years. She's the president of the California State Board of Education. She's the author of many hundreds of publications. Stanford says over 600 um that have deeply impacted K-12 education. And if you've ever written an article or read an article about teachers or school leaders, you have almost certainly either cited Linda's work or read about it in those those papers. But most importantly, um Linda is a deeply humanist scholar who always starts and ends with the people whose heart and soul, whose dedication and vision make learning possible for our young people. And not that I'm talking about our teachers and our school leaders, and of course our young people. So I'm very honored now to turn the mic over um to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond um to share findings from the report. Thank you, Linda, for being here. >> Thank you so much, Bronwyn. It's such a pleasure. Uh and this is uh a report that I really value because it does, as you say, build on decades of research uh in ways that are really coherent and consistent, which is not something we always get in the research world. Um we are uh really dealing with right now in education a whole torrential bevy of challenges. Uh the pandemic exacerbated these challenges, mental health issues for young people, uh learning loss and the need for learning recovery, uh chronic absenteeism rates, educator shortages, and much, much more. And we see a lot of efforts to try to address each of these 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 um support for an investment in the school leader. Uh we find from these decades of research that principals matter really for everything in schools. Uh there was a wonderful review of the research about principal effects on outcomes in schools by Jason Grissom and his colleagues uh at Vanderbilt. Uh they concluded it's difficult to envision an investment with a higher ceiling on potential return than a successful effort to improve principal leadership. Uh it's uh always long been known that you know teachers are the sort of number one uh factor collectively in a school in terms of uh shaping uh outcomes uh and the principal is right behind, but in fact principals have so much to do with the effectiveness of teachers uh that getting that coherent impactful outcome is really a part of the very very important principal in effect. Uh this is the report that we uh recently published. You can get it at uh learningpolicyinstitute.org. Uh and it summarizes as I say these decades of research which show that principals affect student and teacher outcomes primarily in three ways. One is by supporting effective instruction. A second is by retaining teachers. Uh we now know that continuity matters a great deal in schools and that uh teacher retention actually strengthens both school stability, expertise, and outcomes. And then of course by creating a positive climate that welcomes and connects the staff, students, and families and then of course contributes to retaining teachers and supporting effective instruction. Uh you can see that mapped out here in this graphic >> [snorts] >> which uh also uh hints at the ways in which this happens. Principals are involved in selecting and supporting teachers and enabling them to collaborate which affects instruction and practices. Uh they're involved in setting with the team the norms, enabling the voice and the engagement of families and faculty and students which shape the school climate, which in terms shapes teacher retention and that in turn shapes teacher practices, all of which redounds to the benefit of students at the end of the day. I'm going to say a word about each of those three major areas. It's not only true that effective principles are strong instructional leaders. That's something that we've heard in the literature for a couple of decades in terms of engaging with teachers directly around instruction, also observing and coaching, providing feedback, investing in high-quality professional development. But beyond the individual relationship between the principal and a and a given teacher, there's the development of the collective efficacy, the work of the entire staff which matters a great deal because by providing time for collaboration, by working with staff to enable and develop a cohesive educational program with shared practices, students learn more. They learn more when each class, each grade level really builds on the others when there is a shared set of practices across the school. And it's that collective effort including shared decision-making that turns out to have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of the school as a whole and of the principal. Effective principals retain teachers in multiple ways. One is by creating that safe and nurturing environment that supports the well-being of staff as well as the well-being of students. Supporting not only beginning teachers but teachers throughout their careers with resources and with caring. One of the things principals have to do is buffer teachers from all of the input that comes from the other levels of governance, you know, from the district, from the state, from the national federal government, uh from a variety of demands that come from the outside, uh so that they can get their core work done in protecting their time and their agency. And then, as noted, fostering that collaboration that I mentioned. And finally, effective principals create a positive school climate. Uh and part of that is by adopting the kinds of policies and practices that really emphasize positive teacher-student relationships, um that really create an environment of warmth, acceptance, and support. Uh there's a lot of evidence now that um that I'll talk a little more about this that the kind of practices that really enable students to be understood and to be uh supported as they go through various challenges is incredibly important. The same is true for teachers. That inclusive school culture that's very communicative uh and reaches out to build both uh transparency and trust uh between and among the staff and the families and the teachers. And in fact, there's some evidence that as uh principals work effectively with families, uh that is reinforced as they also work collaboratively with teachers. So, all of it is connected. Uh creating those structures for engaging families, whether it's home visits, whether it's parent-student-teacher conferences, uh whether it's the ways in which families are engaged inside the classroom and outside the classroom in a variety of contributions. Um setting those high standards and expectations, and then of course, supporting them uh in achieving those expectations by using democratic school principles. Strategic efforts that principals can take up often have multiple benefits for students, staff, and schools. Uh I mentioned the kinds of positive relational practices like restorative practices where kids are involved with teachers and community meetings on a regular basis developing knowledge of each other and respect for one another as well as having opportunities if things go awry to resolve conflicts together, to make amends, to build the community, and adhere to the community rather than excluding students from the community. And when those practices are increased in a school, uh we have some evidence from another study published at LPI that you see incredible gains in school climate, which then also are associated with improvements in grade point averages, reductions in absences, and then reductions in many, many other forms of misbehavior or stress or mental health issues. So, these things are all related. They are not separate things that one only tackles one at a time. And the principal is at the heart of that coherent approach. In the schools that have positive climates, we do see improved behaviors and engagement and achievement for students, and they attend at higher rates, which reduces chronic absenteeism. And teachers also have less emotional exhaustion, burnout. They have greater feelings of accomplishment and job satisfaction, and they stay at higher rates as well. So, that's a very key piece. And as I noted earlier, we know that building collective efficacy is now really part of the secret sauce that happens in effective schools. One study that was really clear about some of these behaviors compared Chicago principals in schools that were improving compared to those in schools that were not improving but were stagnating. And the differences were that culture of shared organizational learning, getting that shared vision, helping teachers understand and experience how their collective efforts contribute. Then of course setting aside time for collaborative work and shared leadership. As one of the teachers explained why teachers stay in such a school, she said we are a shared learning community. We're very involved with each other in planning, learning, lots of team preparation. We all hold the same vision. We believe in our mission and work together to achieve that. The other piece of the puzzle is that principal retention also matters. We do have a fair amount of turnover in the principalship. About one in five principals leaves their school each year in the United States. And typically when principals leave, teacher attrition increases and student achievement declines. There are a few um uh exceptions to that general rule. Often if the transition has been planned, if the principal maybe is retiring or moving to the central office, and there's a an assistant principal in the school who's been trained by an effective principal, understands the environment, and can come in without disruption, then you see fewer negative effects. But without those kinds of planful transitions, when principals leave, we generally see disruption and a setback for the school for a period of time. And that means we need to pay attention to unnecessary transitions. We know that principals who receive lower salaries and have more challenging working conditions are more likely to leave. Those include things like school size. Big schools have a greater turnover, uh staff qualifications, uh and turnover affect principal turnover, uh whether the district office is supporting the principal and giving them decision-making authority, and also adequate resources and supports. Uh accountability matters, uh punitive accountability approaches, uh where schools were being punished for uh not having, you know, adequate test scores or something like that, uh create more principal turnover, which then exacerbates the problem of uh lower performance in the school. And but the other thing that's very promising is that principal preparation and professional learning can help principals not only become effective, but also uh stay in their positions. Uh and that's a key element of the policies that we need to be worried about. Uh there are two things we've learned about effective learning for school principals. One is the content that is important, uh instructional support, learning about school improvement and change management, learning about how to build a strong school culture and climate, uh knowing how to develop people, uh and also knowing how to meet diverse student needs. Uh all of those things factor in both at the pre-service and at the in-service levels. The other thing that matters is the strategy for learning. It's uh principals are more effective when they've been able to apply the learning to concrete situations in the real world, when they had internships under the wing of an expert principal, and or coaching and mentoring from an expert principal who can help them problem-solve uh through all the many things that happen in the school, and then being part of a cohort or a network where you have a group of folks you can problem-solve with, where you can get support, where you can uh make reciprocal visits and see what another school is doing. All of those things really matter. We also know that um that that kind of learning that I've just described uh affects not only how principals feel about their effectiveness, their attitudes, their skills, their efficacy, but also as I've noted how teachers uh feel about the school, whether they stay, and then how students perform. Uh and we've seen this as another part of the study that we did uh with Wallace support a couple of years ago that uh students' gains um are greater for principals who've had high-quality professional development frequently. And the differences are very large. For example, early career teachers uh uh principals have gains that are if they've had good professional development that allow them to catch up to the effectiveness of mid-career and veteran principals who uh also improve with high-quality professional development, but you see this very large gain for those early career principals. The gains were also most notable from the students who've been most historically underserved uh in terms of who benefits from principals having had strong professional development. So, access to that kind of high-quality principal learning uh is uh getting better over time. More and more districts and states are providing professional learning, but it is still quite inequitable. Principals in high-poverty schools uh receiving less professional development in a lot of areas like school-wide change management, creating that collegial collaborative work environment, uh using restorative practices, uh designing professional learning opportunities. So, we have to worry not only between types of schools, but across states. We saw big, big differences in the extent to which there is access to principal learning. The other thing is that while access to greater content is improving, access to high-leverage learning, the kind that really is applied and supportive of putting into practice what one is learning, is still relatively rare. Less than half of principals we found have had internships on their way into the profession, where they were able to really do the job of a principal with support and mentoring. Relatively few have had peer observations, participated in a principal network. So, policies are needed to really build on what we know about how to help principals be both prepared and supported to do the work that makes such a difference for students. So, I'm just going to close with a couple of the implications for policy that we drew from this body of research. Number one, states can do a great deal, as can some districts, to ensure high-quality preparation by the way they uh structure state licensing and the way they approve and accredit programs. They can also subsidize the costs for principals, especially for those kinds of sheltered internships, where they learn under the wing of an expert principal. You know, they need to be earning a salary during that time. And that needs specific kinds of supports that some states, like Illinois, North Carolina, and some others have been willing to provide at moments in time. They uh can invest strategically in professional learning, and that means not just sit and get topics that get offered periodically, but those high-leverage approaches with cohorts and principal networks, professional learning communities, all kinds of shared learning and coaching can make a big difference. And build robust local pipelines to develop and place principals. And I wanted to just give a shout out to the support that the Wallace Foundation has given to enable districts to learn how to recruit from dynamic teachers into high-quality preparation programs guided by a set of standards that will also guide their induction and professional learning throughout the career, building that whole pipeline of experiences to develop principals and place them, and then building the succession plans that allow transitions to occur in ways that sustain the momentum that schools have from having had that kind of strong leadership. And finally, policy makers can pay attention to working conditions, which include whether the principals have adequate room to make decisions that are going to work for their schools, whether they have that central office support, not only the competitiveness of compensation, but its reliability. We saw from a set of studies that in context where principals, for example, were being evaluated annually on changes in student test scores or other metrics, and then their compensation being dependent on annually changing metrics, that we saw a lot of principal turnover that really undermined the capacity of the schools to improve. I think that even though there's been an idea in some districts that principals should move around every few years. We have a lot of evidence that continuity and stability is an important goal, particularly in the schools that have the greatest needs. And so figuring out how to allow principals to grow in the role and creating those productive mechanisms, not only to give feedback to principals to be but to get feedback from principals about what they need and what allows them to be successful, what the district can do to support education productively. All of those things are part of a long-term vision for supporting the core resources in schools to allow us to address all of those various problems that are often dealt with, you know, individually, but really can be supported and and addressed from a unified perspective. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and pass the ball to Bronwyn. >> Yes, thank you so much, Linda. That was wonderful. You covered a lot of ground in a little bit of time and we have some good questions which we'll answer after we've heard from our next couple of speakers. So, I'm really honored now to introduce Dr. Amy Gleeson, who's been a school principal for over 15 years and for the last 12 has served as the principal of the Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Nashville. In this role, Dr. Gleeson has implemented several teacher development support systems that have earned the school statewide recognition as a model demonstration school. And her work has led to improve student academics in a highly collaborative professional environment. So, she's really an exemplary model of how a principal drives change in the school. She's currently president-elect of the National Association of Elementary School Principals as I mentioned and we're thrilled to have her here to share her thoughts after reading the new LPI report. So, Dr. Gleason, over to you. >> Thank you so much. We're experiencing a summer thunderstorm here in Nashville. So, if you hear a little bit of thunder in the background, that that is what is happening here. Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to take a minute to thank the Wallace Foundation and the Learning Policy Institute for bringing us together today for this important panel. There is nothing more powerful than school leaders learning from and with one another and I'm honored to help shine a spotlight on the indispensable role of today's principal. When we talk about school improvement, our collective focus often and understandably goes straight to the classroom. We focus on the immediate profound relationship between a teacher and a student. But as anyone who has ever stepped into the role of a school leader knows, a classroom does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within an ecosystem. The findings from the Principal Effect report hit home deeply for me because they validate what administrators experience in our schools every single day. The principal is the ultimate multiplier. The report underlines a fundamental truth that we must champion to the wider field. While a principal's impact on student achievement is longer is largely indirect, it is profoundly significant. It is mediated entirely through how we support our teachers, how we cultivate our school environments, and how we create systems that provide intentional monitoring and intervention for our students. In my own journey as a school leader, I quickly learned I could not personally teach every child in my building. But what I could do was shape the conditions under which every teacher taught and every child learned. When we advocate for investing in our principals, we are advocating for the health of the entire ecosystem within that school. The principal effect highlights a necessary paradigm shift that is vital for our field, moving away from the traditional top-down administrator toward a true leader of leaders. 18 years ago when I became a principal, compliance often felt like the primary job description. And we've all been there, completing reports and compliance-based teacher observations that do little to actually shift classroom practice. But the findings in the principal effect remind us that when we invest in deep, high-impact professional learning for principals, we enable them to move beyond compliance. We principals learn how to build trust, engage in meaningful instructional coaching, and how to distribute leadership across our buildings. When a principal is empowered to grow their teachers, teacher efficacy skyrockets. And when teachers feel supported and capable, student success naturally flows. The findings in the principal effect firmly position school leadership as a core equity strategy. This is perhaps the most vital takeaway for our field. A principal sets the tone for a connection-first school climate. As a leader, I have seen firsthand that an environment of psychological safety and true equity does not happen by accident. It happens by deliberate design. It requires a leader who has the training and time to disaggregate data, dismantle inequitable practices, and foster a culture where every student is seen and valued. If we want equitable outcomes for our most marginalized students, we must invest in the leaders who have the expertise to design equitable systems. I'll spend the next few minutes sharing with you a specific system that we implemented at Harpeth Valley Elementary School to address chronic absenteeism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Harpeth Valley is located in Nashville. We are one of 147 schools in the Metro Davidson County area. We have 865 students pre-K through fifth grade. 16% of our students have been identified as having a disability. I'm an 18% of our students are economically disadvantaged. I'm going to on the screen you'll also see some other statistics about our school. And if you'll go ahead to the next slide, we can dive into some attendance data. So, as you can see during the 2018-2019 school year, our overall school attendance was at 95.8%. That was higher than our district statistics which were listed on the right. And that 2018-19 school year was the last year that we had really solid data before the COVID pandemic hit in March of 2020. The 2020-2021 school year, kids were in and out of school and into 2022. So, as reflected in our data from 2022 to 2023, we saw a slight decrease in that average daily attendance. However, we saw a significant increase in the chronic absenteeism of our students. It grew from 6% in 2018 to 9% in 2023. And furthermore, going throughout the next few years, chronic absenteeism continued to be on the rise. And we ended last school year, 2024-25 with 11.2% of our kids chronically absent. And also very significant were the decreases of students who had satisfactory attendance. We were down to 57.5% of our students having satisfactory attendance. So we knew I knew as a leader and I knew as our administration team, our leadership team, and hearing from our teachers that we really needed to be intentional and establish systems that would enhance student achievement and also celebrate students. So that's what you're going to see in the next slides. Next slide, please. We created along with our district and a motto for the year and it was be present, be engaged, be unstoppable. We formed an attendance team that was all administration so assistant principals, principal, also school counselors, and we included our school social worker and our office staff that helped to document our attendance. We set a meeting on our calendars for every two weeks. We had a set agenda and we stuck to meeting every two weeks. You know, the life of a principal can be so busy with so many distractions but we knew if we wanted to move the needle, we needed to commit to this work. So during the meeting we did go over those compliance reports and the data that is so important but we also brainstormed what have we done in the past to incentivize students to come to school every day, every week, every month. Because the strategies we were using were just not not effective and not working. So if you'll move to the next slide we added some intentional attendance incentives. We created this chart and we put the dates on the calendar because we all know if the date is not on the calendar, it probably isn't going to happen. And so we scheduled monthly celebrations for our students. Students that had a perfect attendance for the month, they um received a visit from the attendance cart. And then we also um looked at different ways we could incentivize attendance throughout the first quarter, throughout the first semester, and then throughout um the entire year. So we went ahead and all of us, you know, we sent out those Outlook calendar invites to make sure that we had um all of these dates on our calendar, but we also made sure that we divided the work. So every member of the attendance team had a grade level that they specifically went to each month. So I um had the honor of working with our second grade kiddos. And so when it was time for their monthly rewards, for their quarterly rewards, I was the one that went and checked in on them and celebrated them. And so that really helped to establish some connection um and some intentionality. And they they knew if they heard the attendance cart coming down the hall, they were like, "Oh, it's Dr. Gleason. It's our turn this time." So it really helped for me to get to know some of the kids on a more personal level as well. If you'll go ahead to the next slide, we'll see what some of those incentives looked like. Um so we had two different attendance carts, one that had more food and um fun snacks um for the kids, and then some that had those tangible items. And we did not forget to celebrate our teachers. And we also, on a separate day each month, had a teacher snack cart where everybody that was there that day day got a um got a a treat. And then also we did some quarterly incentives for our um for our teachers and staff as well. Next slide. At the end of each quarter, for kids that had perfect attendance for for 9 weeks, they received an incentive. We had an ice cream party, a pizza party, um we had all kinds of fun celebrations for them. Next slide. And then for the semester, um we also um added some incentives. Um students that were present for the entire first semester of school, they received a t-shirt. They got to choose whether they wanted I am engaged, I'm present, I'm unstoppable that goes along with our theme. And then their parent received a magnet for their car that said my child has perfect attendance at Harpeth Valley. Next slide. The final piece that I want to mention to you is a piece that um that was really lacking for us. And it was addressing the kiddos that were on the borderline of being chronically absent. And we know chronically absent is 10% or more of the days during the school year. So, we each took our grade level, mine was second grade, and we looked at the data and identified 10 to 15 students in that grade level that um were on the borderline of being chronically absent. We started this in late November. Um and we continued to monitor the students' progress. We sent home a permission form letting parents know what we were going to be doing. And every week our 10 to 15 kids per grade level received the attendance punch card that you see on your right. Um and so that was Monday through Friday. If the kids were there every single day that week, and they got a punch, then that same monthly attendance card that they had not received before because they were chronically absent, they got to select something um from uh that card um during those weeks. Um next slide, please. And so we monitored our students' progress. Some of our kids rolled off of the some risk list for chronic absenteeism. We actually had 56 students to graduate from our chronically absent incentive program. And um so we celebrated them, gave them a certificate, they had their pictures made with our admin team. I mean we gave them a little goody bag and but they still when they would see us in the hall they're like, "I'm here today Dr. Gleason, I'm here." So we know that building that relationship really mattered to them. Next slide. And as I conclude just the data was incredible. We have our most up-to-date data, our school year ended 2 weeks ago. We increased our average daily attendance to 95.4. Chronic absenteeism decreased to 9.7% and then our satisfactory attendance really skyrocketed to 65.9%. We're getting really close to those pre-COVID numbers. So these systems that we put in place truly had a great effect. Next slide, please. And I had to give a quick shout out to our team. No principal can do this work in isolation. Our attendance team um did just an exceptional job of supporting our kids and we held each other accountable to making sure that we were um that we were following up on our attendance incentives and celebrating our students. So I just want to thank you all so much for the opportunity to share my thoughts and this best practice with you today. I will turn it back over now to Bronwyn. >> Thank you so much, Dr. Gleason. Um those were wonderful examples of how your leadership drove a wide array of strategies to encourage attendance even while as you said it was implemented by many people in this school. It needed the leader to keep the eye on the ball. We got lots of questions which we'll try and get back to um at the uh at towards the end of the hour. Um but I'm now pleased to introduce our our final speaker. For the past 4 years, Sonia Ruiz has been the principal at Jane Addams Middle School in the Valley View Community Unit School District which is outside of Chicago. She's the National Association of Secondary School Principals um to 2026 National Middle Level Principal of the Year which I I earlier. And under um Sonia's leadership, Jane Addams has earned exemplary status um, for three consecutive years, placing the school in the top 10% of schools in Illinois. She's received numerous awards and recognitions as principal of the year at regional, state, national levels, multiple ones, and we're so glad to have you here um, Sonia to share your thoughts on the report's findings as in relationship to middle schools. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. Um, I'm really going to talk about just creating the conditions for success and just how leadership shapes positive school climate. Um, next slide. I currently, as I was listening to Linda earlier, I am part of Valley View School District. That's a suburb outside of Chicago, but I'm also part of networks and um, it helps me in my leadership and obviously my school. I am part of our Illinois Principal Association. Um, I'm also part of a National Association of Secondary Principals and currently I'm in a cohort through Illinois State University where I'm finishing up my doctorate. Next slide. So, I'm from Chicago. I still live in Chicago. I had to include a picture of Chicago Bulls because to understand why leadership matters, I often compare a principal to a coach. A team can have incredible talented athletes, but talent alone does not guarantee success. Without a coach to create a vision, to develop a game plan, identify those strains, and ensure everybody's working towards that same goal, the team will never reach its full potential. And when you look at this crew and this team, man, you had Dennis Rodman, very different kind of player than a Michael Jordan, right? So, you need to know your people. Schools are no different. We We talented teachers, we have dedicated staff, supportive families, amazing students, and that role of the principal is to bring all those strengths together and create a shared vision, build the conditions that allow everybody to succeed, our students and our staff. And when you look at our schedule, that reflects what matters. Our teachers have common plans so they can collaborate. This last school year, as I was stated earlier, we were ranked exemplary. That's been 3 years in a row. Um and Illinois looks at achievement, proficiency, but also growth of students when they're looking at the stats of all the different schools. So, over my years as a principal, I've learned that positive school climate doesn't happen by accident. It's intentional. It's built through relationships. It's built through systems, and it's a shared commitment towards that common vision. So, school climate is 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? And a principal really plays a critical role in shaping those experiences. So, today I'm just going to share some of the ways we've intentionally created a positive school climate at our school and why strong sustained leadership is is essential to make that happen. Next slide. Leadership creates direction. So, one of the first things we did at our school was create a shared vision and mission. Rather than just developing statements ourselves, we gathered voice. And over my years as a principal, I've learned that people are much more likely to support a vision when they have had voice creating it. So, our school, these processes create created ownership, trust, a sense of belonging. Staff, students, and families understood that their perspectives mattered, and that what we were building was something together. That shared vision became the foundation for the positive school culture we continue to build today. Next slide. So, principal guides the process. We have to look at the whole system, right? Our school building, but we also have to take into account the focus of the whole child. And one of the goals was to strengthen students' sense of belonging. We wanted every student to feel welcome, valued, and connected to our to our school community. So, that was part of our school improvement plan. Um to accomplish this, we focused, obviously, creating learning environments that reflected students and honored their racial and cultural identities. We worked to ensure that students could see themselves represented in our school and feel that their identities were were welcome. Um usually, you'll see school improvement plans, and they only focus on academics. We knew that this was important for us. We also emphasized the importance of daily connections. Staff intentionally built relationships with our students, and I'm going to show you how later, through everyday interactions, including greeting students by name, creating positive starts of the day, and fostering classroom communities where students felt safe and supported. Equitable systems is also part of our um school improvement plan. So, that also meant examining our practices through the lens of inclusion. At a At our school, we have five middle schools in our district. We are fortunate that at Jane Addams, we have the multi-needs program, and that challenged us to think about participation. We began asking ourselves important questions, like, how do we ensure that every student can participate in assemblies? How do we make school dances or celebrations or any special events accessible and meaningful to students who have different abilities. So, this these conversations helped us move beyond simply providing access to intentionally creating opportunities for belonging. So, we looked at our processes, we removed those barriers, we redesigned experiences so that all students could participate alongside their peers. And again, I've learned that belonging is not something we hope students feel, it's something we intentionally create through system structures and experiences that we design from every day. This work wasn't separate from academics, it was essential to academics. Students learn best when they know they're valued members of our school community. Next slide. So, one of the most important lessons that I've learned is that you cannot create a positive school climate without listening to people who work in the building every day. So, we had these Friday one-on-one conversations with our staff. So, there was a schedule every Friday we met with a different department and scheduled individual meetings with each staff member. Um, and we had four guiding questions. They weren't a surprise, they're actually linked in here. Um, and that was from professional development that I received, so bringing that back. I've attached the document. But, they they were welcome to come with any other things they wanted to discuss. And really, they knew the purpose was to create a culture in which they were able to express this openly. So, this went far beyond a survey. Instead of asking feedback once a year, we created ongoing opportunities for this meaningful dialogue. We asked staff what was working, what were some of the challenges, how can we support them, and what opportunities they saw for improvement. So, what we gained wasn't just information. It was that trust, right? So, I've learned that staff members know their voices matter. They see leadership responding to their concerns, so then they become stronger partners creating that positive school culture. We've continued our Friday meeting structure, but now it's not just talking, it's about what we're seeing in the classrooms because now we're in the classrooms, and every week's a different department. But, teachers know they're work coming every week to provide feed back, and we have conversations on what we're seeing in the classrooms. But, because we created that positive um school climate, this is a welcoming practice. They want us in their classrooms. Students know who we are, and they're excited to show us what they're learning in the classes. Next slide. Data's important. You cannot just look at academic scores. Obviously, you have to because you want to know who's achieving, who's not, where do you see the most growth, what are departments doing, what are teachers doing differently. But, we also look at data to see how students feel, their efficacy, their social-emotional, their sense of belonging. And, I'm going to be honest, that first year when I started, it we were coming out of COVID, um and everything that was going on in the world with that, and when we looked at our segregated data, we realized that not all of our groups of students felt like they belonged. Some students groups did not trust staff. So, the first day I I was in front of my staff, that I presented that data because I wanted to make sure that they knew the number. But, obviously, what we've done has gone beyond the number cuz data can only show you so much. Um we needed to shift mindsets, beliefs, and hearts, right? And, that comes from the stories. So, next slide. We humanized our data. Um we asked staff what students they felt they had a connection with, but then we also got student voice. Again, beyond a percentage, this was real questions that we asked students, do they have a adult they can connect with? Can they name them? And then what makes them feel like they belong? Um, this was very interesting cuz we found that what our sixth graders needed versus our seventh grader or our eighth graders was very different. Um, then we asked them, what is one thing you want staff to know about you? And we created a video. Next slide. And this is what we showed our staff. It was It was their words and the student voices, so it was beyond numbers. It was really about our kids. Next slide. As administrators, you have to be able to not just present the facts. We didn't defend anything. We didn't minimize it. We knew that this was important to change our practice. Going back to that, and then we can provide targeted professional development so that we can change what was going on so that students now would feel safe. And then besides creating professional development for staff, we created lessons to address some of those concerns that students had. Next slide. So again, student voice isn't just about fixing problems. It's also reflects the value of our students, about visibility, affirmation. It's about students seeing themselves reflected in their environment. So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of how that looks like. Next. Next. These are our expectations at our school. So you they see their faces here. Um, when students walk through the hallways, they see themselves because we created a school that reflected. If you go to the one before, um because their student population is diverse, we want to make sure every student felt represented, respected, and included. Equity is not a separate initiative. It has influenced our conversations, our decisions, and practices. Again, a positive school climate cannot exist if students feel invisible. Every student deserves to feel that they belong and that their identity is valued within the school community. And these are some of the intentional things that we did. Next. Next. Next. In this In these slides right here, this is a um bulletin board that was put up by our students. So, on the right, you're going to see their voices. They wrote these statements. So, it wasn't just about getting quotes about famous people. It was about getting their voices, and that's displayed in our hallways. Um it says, "No matter how curly or straight your hair is, we're all one. Don't be ashamed of your skin tone." And that honored them. That created that opportunity to show that. Next slide. Leadership also creates systems that support all learners. Relationships are critical, but positive school climate requires strong systems, and we have a strong MTSS system, and we've continued to grow from nothing to where we are now. Um we've built restorative practices within that system. And systems help us identify earlier, respond more effectively, and ensure that no student is ever overlooked. Um next slide. So, when we reflect on everything I just kind of talked about, um leadership it it affects the vision, the trust, the systems, and ensures voices are heard, and it created the conditions for the success. Next slide. If If you press play, these are kids. We're celebrating them as they're coming in when we found out we had 3 years of exemplary in a row. Um And that's amazing, right? Um None of this happened in a single year. Building trust takes time. Creating a shared vision takes time. Developing systems takes time. Um changing culture takes time. This is why principal stability matters. If we want schools to improve, we must support principals and create conditions that allow them to stay long enough to see their work through. In my experience, and supported by research, it takes at least 5 years of consistent leadership to be able to make some of these moves, and create these systems, and create this trust within your community. Finally, next slide, I'm going to leave you with this final thought. The most successful schools are not successful because of one program, or one curriculum, or one initiative. They're successful because they're intentional in creating environments where people feel connected, supported, valued, and inspired to do their best work. As principals, we may not teach every lesson, but we influence the conditions in which every lesson takes place. And if we truly want positive school climates, then we have to not only invest in our teach in our students and our teachers, we also have to invest in the leaders who guide that work. Because when leadership is sustained and supported, then schools can become places where everyone can thrive. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Sonia. That was really wonderful and a very powerful way to end um the presentation with all of the example. And as you said and goes right back to what Linda said in the beginning, it's a coherent system. You've got to create you've got to create the garden for the for everything to grow. And that's really the main um point of this um of this report and rooted in the evidence. So, I want to say we've only got a couple of minutes. We have several questions, but I don't think we have time to actually get any real answers to any of them. Um we we um have questions So, I'm going to just list what they are and if anybody wants to jump in um any of our speak three speakers want to jump in, I'd welcome a minute. But, we got questions on whether there are different leadership models for um elementary versus middle school versus high school. We got questions about how do we measure things? We got questions about the relationship between central office and strong um school leadership. And um and we got questions about like what state So, so there are multiple things being discussed here, right? It's sort of like the policy conditions that allow principals to be supported um and prepared and then what they do in the space themselves. So, there's also a question of are there states out there that are doing this work well? So, we have about a minute 30 for that and I I'd welcome Sonya, you're unmuted. Would you like to answer? >> Yeah. So, in Illinois, we did have mentoring. I was provided a mentor, although I had been an administrator assistant principal for many years. I was provided a mentor through our Illinois Principal Association when I became a principal. And I'm going to tell you that made a world of difference. My district also provided a mentor. Um there are no differences in the type of programs Illinois has between elementary, middle school, or high school principals. We do have to get an endorsement for leadership, and it does include an internship, which is I think gave me the opportunity to learn the job before I came into the job. >> I'll just uh second that to say that Illinois is one of the states that we have pulled out, and Chicago area is one of the places that's done a lot. Um Delaware uh with its school leadership academy, California's new school leadership academy, uh and North Carolina with its long-standing efforts are among the places that have also made those investments in serious ways. >> Wonderful. Well, we are at the hour, so I want to say thank you so much um to Dr. Gleason, to Principal Reese, and to Dr. Darling-Hammond. Thank you so much for um a wonderful conversation. And there were so many questions. We will do more webinars. We will answer many of them in the future. Um but also feel free to write to research@wallacefoundation.org, and we can try and follow up with you. Thank you so much, and thank you again to the team that put this all together. >> Thank you all.