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Key Findings

1. Districts spent resources in five key areas related to principal pipelines: development of leader standards, preservice preparation for aspiring leaders, selective hiring, on-the-job support and evaluation, and systems of support to sustain the work across all areas.
2. Districts spent about $5.6 million each year, on average, on their principal pipelines, which translated to just 0.4 percent of all per pupil expenditures in the districts.
3. On average, districts devoted small shares of total pipeline resources to leader standards and selective hiring and placement: around $290 per principal and $2,900 per principal each year, respectively.
4. On average, districts devoted much larger shares of total pipeline resources to preservice activities and on-the-job support and evaluation: about $9,400 per principal and $14,000 per principal each year, respectively.
5. Costs for district personnel time made up nearly half of spending devoted to all pipeline activities.

Effective school leadership has tremendous potential to improve outcomes for students and promote excellence in schools. Indeed, a high-quality leader in just one school can potentially improve the performance of dozens of teachers and hundreds (even thousands) of students. However, despite their demonstrated potential, efforts to improve the quality of school leadership can be a tough sell for districts and states. In an era of serious resource constraints, states and districts often feel pressure to spend money directly on students or teachers. Limited information about the costs of initiatives targeting school leadership compounds these pressures and precludes districts from embarking on this work. But poor school leadership could also have a high cost. Often overlooked are the costs that districts bear when they have to repeatedly replace principals. Furthermore, the ongoing costs of poor leadership — for example, higher teacher turnover, worsening school climate conditions, and declines in student achievement — are less visible but arguably more significant than the cost of replacing school leaders.