Special Report
School & District Management Opinion

Gauging the Quality of School Leadership

By James P. Spillane — January 03, 2008 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Teacher quality has garnered much attention from a diverse group of scholars. A natural next step is to focus on the quality of school leadership and management. After all, the policy environment holds schools, not individual classroom teachers, accountable. By extension, from the work on teacher quality, the obvious response is to examine principal quality by looking at the traditional cast of characters: principals’ expertise, certification, experience, and so on. While this empirical research on principal quality is important and needs to be done, more will be needed to get good proxies for leadership-and-management quality.

I’d argue that expertise or capability are not entirely an individual affair. By letting go of the myth of individualism, the challenges of measuring school leadership-and-management quality begin to emerge. The expertise or ability to perform some core task that is critical for school improvement may be distributed over two or more leaders in a school, in both formal and informal roles, and involve various tools and organizational routines.


Commentaries
Taking Teaching Quality Seriously
The Need for Data Systems
A People-Driven Business
Flexibility and Dynamic Personnel
From Gaps to Gifts
Reforming Teacher Compensation
Human Capital Management

At one level, this is an acknowledgment that the work of leading and managing the school involves a team of individuals with formally designated leadership positions (such as assistant principals and curriculum coordinators), and that the “aggregate” expertise and capability of this team might be an important consideration in the quality of the school’s leadership and management. If we were really ambitious, we might even attempt to measure the contribution of informal leaders, especially teacher leaders. Thinking about expertise and capability as distributed, we have to go beyond simply acknowledging the expertise of individual leaders in a school to considering how they complement one another in the performance of key school improvement tasks. This is difficult but important work. Finally, recognizing that expertise is situated further complicates the measurement task. A situated perspective would press us to acknowledge and understand how what counts as quality or capability in school leadership and management might differ, depending on such factors as the student population served and the teacher workforce in a school.

Work on teacher quality in the education sector has greatly benefited from the field of economics. Similar benefits can be gained from work in distributed and situated cognition, as we move forward and take on the challenge of school leadership-and-management quality. Let’s not fall into the trap of easy measures and quick fixes when it comes to studying and measuring that quality. If we do, our “easy measures” will eventually be debunked, leading to the erroneous conclusion that measuring the quality of school leadership and management is impossible.

Events

Artificial Intelligence K-12 Essentials Forum How AI Use Is Expanding in K-12 Schools
Join this free virtual event to explore how AI technology is—and is not—improving K-12 teaching and learning.
Federal Webinar The Trump Budget and Schools: Subscriber Exclusive Quick Hit
EdWeek subscribers, join this 30-minute webinar to find out what the latest federal policy changes mean for K-12 education.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Curriculum Webinar
End Student Boredom: K-12 Publisher's Guide to 70% Engagement Boost
Calling all K-12 Publishers! Student engagement flatlining? Learn how to boost it by up to 70%.
Content provided by KITABOO

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Do Districts Have 'Administrative Bloat'? This State May Let the Public Decide
A North Carolina bill would require districts to publish the salaries of central-office administrators.
5 min read
A vector illustration of a large, red one hundred dollar bill on it's side with men in business suits balancing on the edge with some falling off.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
School & District Management Opinion Want to Be a Better Education Leader? Try These 5 Strategies
Teams should leave you feeling more connected, not drained and disengaged.
6 min read
Screen Shot 2025 05 18 at 8.06.14 AM
Canva
School & District Management How Principals Can Boost Teacher Morale
Principals share advice for how they support teachers during uncertain times.
4 min read
Vector illustration of a large handing holding an open book with silhouetted women and men standing on the pages of the open book.
iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion Denver Superintendent: Why We Sued the Federal Government
Education leaders shouldn't remain apolitical in the face of immigration enforcement changes and other threats from the Trump administration.
Alex Marrero
6 min read
Human hands created secure environment for children via home roof gesture. Adults taking care of vulnerable students.
Mary Long/iStock + Education Week