Lessons Learned About Effective Professional Development for Principals

Jon Minton had been the principal of Elizabethton High School in eastern Tennessee for five years when, in 2024, the state department of education chose him to lead a regional “principal study council.” The group of principals from his area met monthly to discuss common challenges they faced in their schools, learn from each other, and workshop solutions.

After the group lost its funding, Minton searched for a cost-effective way to continue, knowing that he and his principal colleagues could benefit from continuing to learn on the job—and from each other.

A DIY podcast called “Beyond the Bell” was born from the pivot. It features conversations between school leaders reflecting on common challenges, like how to limit their own screen time when all the apps required to run a school live on their smartphones and schools are cracking down on students’ cellphone use.

“It’s easy to assume that someone with more experience may need less professional development, when, in reality, it may be much more, because the job has evolved and changed over time,” Minton said.

Principals are expected to lead major shifts in instruction, manage school finances, support teachers and facilitate their professional growth, and guide the fight against chronic absenteeism. They are middle managers, disciplinarians, and visionaries, and need a complex mix of skills to do their jobs well—pointing to a need for continued professional development.

Typically, though, school districts have put less of an emphasis on professional development for principals than for teachers. It’s often been infrequent or bunched together at the beginning of a school leader’s career rather than continuous. More experienced principals often have to piece together their own learning opportunities—attend conferences, log in to online trainings, watch TED talks, or even create their own PD, as Minton did.

“Principals are hungry for continued learning opportunities,” said Marjorie Wechsler, the principal research manager at the Learning Policy Institute, a research organization, who has examined the landscape of professional development for principals and the kinds of training most principals seek.

When principals can access professional development, it’s most helpful when it incorporates the same principles as effective professional learning for teachers—it’s ongoing rather than one-and-done; it’s collaborative, with principals working out problems together; it’s addressing real, on-the-job challenges; and it involves continuous feedback from mentors and coaches.

“Being a principal can be very lonely. Having people to share ideas with, to bring up their successes and challenges with others, is important,” Wechsler said. “It doesn’t mean you have to gain everything that way, but how are they going to work through some of the harder, stickier things, like chronic absenteeism or teacher morale?”

Researchers identify the elements of high-quality PD for principals

An effective principal can lift up a school, and whether they receive high-quality professional development matters, Wechsler found in a 2022 report she co-authored called “Developing Effective Principals” that synthesized two decades of studies on principal PD and preparation.

Students at schools led by principals who received high-quality professional development were projected to gain 29 days’ more learning in English/language arts and 55 days’ more learning in math than peers at schools where principals had little access to professional development, according to one of those studies. The likelihood of teachers staying at a school from one year to the next when it was led by a principal who received high-quality preparation was 89% compared with 79% at other schools, according to another.

But what exactly makes principal professional development high-quality?

The takeaway from Wechsler and her coauthors’ review of the research was that these high-quality opportunities featured individualized support for school leaders, often through mentoring or coaching; communities where principals could collaborate with and learn from peers and tackle problems; and on-the-job learning.

The research on the topic is still nascent, but it should propel school districts and states to invest in more “authentic learning experiences” for principals, Wechsler said.

Principals over time have gained access to professional development in topics for which they need support, Wechsler and her co-authors found, but access to the elements of high-quality principal PD is uneven—often more available to principals of schools with higher-income student populations.

Access to high-quality PD for principals requires a budget—for coaches or mentors, coverage for principals when they’re out for training, and other costs.

Yearlong academies give principals coaching, a chance to work on solutions

The infrequent or theoretical, sit-and-get type of PD that has been dominant for so long can feel disconnected from the practical aspects of running a school, said Joe Schroeder, the associate executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Administrators.

As a school leader in Milwaukee almost two decades ago, Schroeder said, the PD opportunities he had were few and far between—usually a mix of one-day workshops or conferences. ”Those things have historically been helpful for networking and for initial learning. [But] they don’t really help transform practices that benefit kids,” he said.

Over the last 14 years, Schroeder and his colleagues have tried to change that by launching multi-day academies aimed at new, mid-career, and veteran principals.

They’re structured around a “plan, do, study, act” cycle that’s grounded in tackling on-the-job challenges and lasts through the school year.

Participating principals bring a problem related to student learning or school climate that they want to tackle, and receive coaching from more experienced principals, usually over two to three days at the outset, to come up with ideas to solve it.

Principals then go back to their schools, apply the ideas, and return to a group of peers after 90 days to share data on how they worked. At a final meeting in the spring, either virtual or in person, the peer group digs deeper into the problem and helps principals sharpen their solutions. Between the meetings, coaches and mentors monitor participants’ progress and offer feedback and support.

This cycle mirrors the characteristics of high-quality PD outlined by Wechsler, and they’re the same hallmarks of effective professional learning for teachers.

Learning opportunities for principals need to be frequent but interspersed, so leaders have time to work on their challenges, collect data, and reflect on the effects on students and staff, Schroeder said. Principals also need feedback and accountability mechanisms to help them finish their year with the academy.

Schroeder acknowledges the time commitment is challenging for principals.

“The job is designed to pay attention to the urgent,” he said. “We have to turn their attention from the urgent to the impactful. That’s what moves the needle for students.”

A district converts principal supervision into ongoing PD

Training principals can’t be an afterthought for school districts—it requires more than a 20-minute session tacked on to a central office visit to learn about a new policy, said Jasmine Kullar, the chief school leadership officer at the 106,000-student Cobb County school district in Georgia.

That’s why Kullar adapted the professional learning community, or PLC, model—usually used for teacher PD—for Cobb County’s 116 principals.

A handful of principals in the same area and at similar schools meet once a month to discuss challenges and learn from each other. Kullar’s office sends the groups agenda items to discuss at each meeting, but also lets principals suggest topics. Principals in these PLCs also visit their colleagues’ schools to observe each other.

Principals enjoy learning from their peers, Kullar said, and the model also ensures they’re receiving advice from other practitioners, not just experts or central office staff who haven’t recently led schools.

Kullar has also restructured Cobb County’s principal supervision model into an opportunity for principals to keep learning.

Traditionally, the principal supervisor’s role was to visit as many schools as possible and observe classrooms. But without feedback for principals built into the process, nothing really changed, Kullar said.

Now, these supervisors are effectively instructional coaches for the principals. Principals use student achievement data to home in on teachers who need help. Supervisors visit these teachers’ classrooms three times a year with the principal to determine if the feedback has helped these teachers.

“The hope is that there’s going to be improvement in the areas that the principal had identified that the teacher was going to work on. So, now there’s a little bit more accountability,” Kullar said.

While more collaborative, the model has limits. Cobb County has seven principal supervisors for 116 schools. Each supervisor can only work in-depth with three principals at a time, choosing schools they think need the most help.

Next year, each supervisor will pick different schools.

“Of course, we would love to have more people,” Kullar said, “but not having people doesn’t mean you don’t do the work. We just start small.”