Helping prepare school leadership to meet todays students

The Strengthening School Leadership (SSL) cohort represents the first major initiative under the Invest in Educators strategy with foundational work stretching back to 2018.  Findings from a 2019 report generated by Attuned Education Partners focused on the context of school leadership in Massachusetts noted sobering challenges in the areas of preparation, coaching, scope of the role, and diverse leadership representation mirroring the diversity of students across the Commonwealth.

In an effort to learn more about the ways to address these challenges, three projects spanning five school systems have been probing the unique challenges facing their contexts, implementing plans across their systems to address those challenges. Each project site selected their own technical assistance (TA) partner to support them along the way.  

The work has developed through each successive phase and as the sites and TA partners learned along the way with continued support from Barr and Attuned. While the work is ongoing, some initial wins at the sites include:  

• Improvements in school leader retention against broader state and national trends.   
• Increases in principal and assistant principal diversity, also outpacing broader trends.  
• Greater understanding of the capacities and strengths of leaders within their contexts.