Community Context: Influence and Implications for School Leadership Preparation (original) (raw)

Research on school leadership shows that principals can significantly impact student achievement by influencing classroom instruction, organizational conditions, community support and setting the teaching and learning conditions in schools (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2004). Moreover, strong principals provide a multiplier effect that enables improvement initiatives to succeed (Manna, 2015). Yet each year, as many as 22% of current principals retire or leave their schools or the profession (U.S. Department of Education, 2014) requiring districts to either promote or hire new principals to fill vacancies (School Leaders Network, 2014). One in five principals working in schools in the 2011-12 school year left their school by the 2012-13 school year (Goldring and Taie 2014). Additional research shows that one out of every two principals is not retained beyond their third year of leading a school. School leaders who are retiring, transferring schools, or pursuing new opportunities within the education sector are not being replaced by enough qualified candidates (Policy & Advocacy Center-NASSP, 2017, p. 1). As a result, many school districts across the country report principal vacancies and a serious lack of qualified applicants to replace them. In addition, the demand for employment of principals is estimated to will grow 6 percent nationwide by the year 2022 due to population increases (Policy & Advocacy Center-NASSP, 2017, p.2).