Built to Last: Lessons from Principal Pipelines for Sustaining Change

Each fall, millions of students across the country return to schools led by a different principal than the principal who waved goodbye at the start of summer, with roughly 20% of principals leaving their school each year (NCES, 2024).

Some principals retire; others move schools or districts, and others exit education entirely. While we are all familiar with how this can create instability or uncertainty in schools, these changes are not necessarily entirely problematic. Principal turnover may create an opportunity for principals to find a better fit for their skills, or for the district to install a principal better suited to their local needs and goals. But one thing is certain: districts need leaders ready to step into the principal’s office when a principal departs.  

Districts need leaders ready to step into the principal’s office when a principal departs.  

Many districts formed principal pipelines to ensure they had a cadre of leaders prepared to step into school leadership as vacancies occur. Principal pipelines are district-led initiatives focusing on specific domains, or sets of activities and systems to recruit, hire, develop, and support school leaders. Principal pipelines often include such areas as partnerships with universities to prepare leaders for the community and district context and revised approaches to principal supervision. Nationwide, roughly 75 percent of districts have some principal pipeline activities, though as expected, differences exist in the extent to which small, medium, and large districts adopt specific pipeline domains (or key activities) (Diliberti et al., 2024). 

Anyone who has worked in central offices and schools knows the challenge of maintaining momentum and sustainability for an improvement initiative like a principal pipeline. Turnover by the superintendent or central office staff or changing priorities, due to policy or community concerns, can make efforts like principal pipelines hard to maintain (Goldring et al., 2023). After studying districts implementing principal pipelines for years, we asked what helps districts create and maintain pipelines that last? 

Implementing Principal Pipelines for Sustainability

We dove into four districts that were sustaining principal pipelines amidst change: superintendent turnover, the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in principal retirements. A common thread in our findings was that sustainability wasn’t something these districts did at the end of implementing the pipeline domains, “after it’s working.” 

Implementing for sustainability was the mantra, starting at the beginning of the change process, and continued through initial implementation and maintaining the initiative, and extended throughout their continuous improvement efforts. 

The principal pipeline—or any other improvement initiative—must be clearly connected with the district’s overall vision.

Here are four dimensions of sustainability to consider when engaging central office teams to pursue the daily work of principal pipelines to build pipelines that last: 

Dimension #1: Ensuring Strategic Alignment

The principal pipeline—or any other improvement initiative—must be clearly connected with the district’s overall vision. In the districts we studied, these connections were written into documents like board-approved strategic plans and other policy documents. For example, The School District of Philadelphia’s strategic plan states: Turnover in districts, especially turnover of school and district leaders, can negatively impact student outcomes...Succession planning requires identifying talent who can step into critical roles immediately and ensuring they have the institutional knowledge and development necessary to do so efficiently and effectively... 

Dimension #2: Communicating Clarity in Intent 

One central office leader shared that “I have rarely heard [the superintendent] speak publicly when he does not specifically mention the principal pipeline...He rarely speaks to anybody when he doesn’t talk about that. And the reason is his philosophy about leadership: change does not happen in a school without an effective principal. The principal is the lever for change. And if the principal is going to be the lever for change, then it is incumbent upon us as a district to make sure that we are preparing as many good principals as possible. 

The superintendent and other senior leaders intentionally amplified how a principal pipeline is part of their overall strategy to move their district closer to achieving its goals. These high-level leaders built this awareness far beyond central office, sharing about the importance of leadership and leader development when speaking with school-level staff and community partners. Districts also worked with their university partners for principal preparation to create alignment between the university programming and the district’s leadership standards and needs. 

Dimension #3: Aligning Institutional Elements and Supports 

Districts aligned multiple central office departments, policies, and partnerships to support the principal pipeline. In some districts, a single central office leader had the authority to coordinate across departments; in others, an integrated team with designated representatives from multiple departments coordinated the activities of the principal pipeline. This often required rewriting job descriptions, creating communication structures and routines, and reallocating time effort to ensure that all involved parties had the resources to achieve the district’s goals.  

The superintendent and other senior leaders intentionally amplified how a principal pipeline is part of their overall strategy to move their district closer to achieving its goals.

In every district, central office leaders explained how they reorganized the central office infrastructure to support and sustain the pipeline: moving facilities and logistics management to ombudsmans, creating communication structures and routines for all the departments who work with principals to share information, renegotiating partnerships connected to principal training and support, and more. One central office leader explained . . . with the reduced case load for principal supervisors, we’ll be able to reach our vision for capacity building through our assistant superintendents. Growing and serving school leaders continues to be prioritized in long-term resourcing.  

Dimension #4: Maintaining Priority 

Every district leader knew why principal pipelines mattered for reaching their overall goals – but they didn’t stop there. In each district, central office staff tracked data related to key outcomes that were important to the district and used that data to continuously improve the pipeline. One central office leader shared how their district’s ongoing data collection on principal retention and performance shape their pipeline program: 82% of those who moved from AP [to principal] are [principal pipeline] graduates…in [principal evaluation data], those who had not been successful in carrying out things that would move their school, that’s the reason we're being more attentive to developing decision making skills [in pipeline programming].  

Calls to Action for Central Office Leaders 

1. As a team, review your district’s strategic planning and policy documents. Where and how does your district explain the importance of principals and leadership development? Are these references coherent within and across documents? If there is turnover in district leadership, what documents and roles keep the pipeline aligned with the evolving district mission?  

2. What routines for collecting and reviewing data help central office leaders maintain focus on the pipeline, adapt the pipeline to stay responsive to district needs, and demonstrate its value to stakeholders?