Cultivating a Taste for Leadership

Instead of waiting for applicants, states, districts, and charter organizations are increasingly recruiting and training candidates for the principalship.

Most school districts wait for leadership talent to emerge by posting job openings and then seeing who applies. But at least some districts and charter-management organizations are starting to take a more active role in identifying and supporting future principals earlier in their careers.

This more systematic approach to leadership development, known as “succession planning,” has long been common in business, the military, and other fields. Now, a combination of factors is causing school systems both here and abroad to take succession planning more seriously.

“There’s a perfect storm in the whole education profession, including in leadership—a massive demographic turnover, where the boomer generation is leaving and there’s no intermediary generation immediately ready to take over,” said Andrew Hargreaves, a professor of education at Boston College and the co-author of the 2006 book Sustainable Leadership ...