What Makes Them the Best? An Analysis of the Relationship between State Education Quality and Principal Preparation Practices

This paper examines the relationship between principals’ training experiences and perceived school quality in seven U.S. states. Current school principals were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the comparative effectiveness of field experiences in the principal preparation program (PPP) each attended. States were selected to represent high, middle, and low scorers in the annual Education Week “Quality Counts” report. Surveys were emailed to school principals in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota; the response rate was over 17%. Most respondents completed field experiences as part of their PPPs and considered many of those experiences to have been valuable learning tools. Principals from the highest-ranked states identified data-driven analysis as having helped prepare them the most, while principals from two of the three lowest-ranked states mentioned working with curriculum, data analysis, & involvement in teacher observations and/or evaluations as field experiences that helped prepare them the most. This research found strong support for expanding the use of field experiences in principal training, especially as part of a longer PPP period or internship. It also indicates a need for more budget and finance training; teacher observation and evaluation training; curriculum training; and student discipline training