Limited Print and Electronic Distribution RightsThis document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

he RAND American Educator Panels (AEP) consist of the American Teacher Panel (ATP) and the American School Leader Panel (ASLP). These panels are nationally representative samples of K-12 public school educators. The ATP includes more than 25,000 teachers, and the ASLP includes more than 7,500 school principals. Both groups respond to numerous online survey requests each year. The AEP began in 2014 and expanded significantly during the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years (Robbins and Grant, 2020).Since 2014, the RAND Corporation has recruited AEP members using probabilistic sampling methods. The AEP samples are designed to be of sufficient size to facilitate national analyses as well as analyses of prevalent subgroups at the national level (e.g., elementary school teachers, high school mathematics teachers, teachers in urban schools). Similarly, the panels are designed to permit analyses of the following geographic areas: Alabama,

As Deborah Ball and David Cohen wrote in 1996, "The design and spread of curriculum materials is one of the oldest strategies for attempting to influence classroom instruction." Unlike other educational reforms, which may depend on the talent and skills of the educators who lead them, a curriculum-textbooks or online materials composed of organized and scaffolded objectives, lesson plans, activities, and assessments constituting an entire course of studyis already written and static, seemingly ready to be scaled across whole states and school districts. KEY FINDINGS■ Most teachers do not use a single curriculum as it is written. Instead, they reported using multiple curricula, making substantial modifications, or creating their own curriculum materials.■ Most teachers agreed that their observations and evaluations take into account their use of curricula. However, fewer teachers reported receiving coaching or professional development workshops focused on curriculum use.■ How teachers used their curriculum was connected to whether they reported receiving evaluative feedback on curriculum use or more frequent curriculum-focused professional learning (PL).■ Teachers in eight states focused on curriculum reforms were more likely to report use of standards-aligned curricula andin some cases-more evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ Teachers in high-poverty schools reported more-frequent use of standards-aligned curricula for English language arts (ELA), digital materials, and supplementary materials. They were also more likely to report evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ The extent of teachers' curriculum-focused evaluative feedback and PL were connected with the number of standards-aligned practices in which teachers reported all their students engaging. However, whether teachers reported using a standards-aligned curriculum regularly-in itself-was not related to teachers' reports of their students' standards-aligned practices.

Purpose: A school principal’s ability to engage with external stakeholders is critical for achieving a range of school objectives such as involving parents, implementing policy mandates, and accessing resources from the school district. This study examines how novice school principals make sense of different external stakeholders’ demands and their own role in relation to external stakeholders during their first year on the job. Research Approach: We analyze 53 semistructured interviews conducted with 18 novice principals throughout their first year on the job. We use an iterative process of coding and analysis to identify patterns and verify our findings by ensuring interrater reliability in our coding and examining disconfirming evidence. Findings: We find that novice principals struggle to make sense of external stakeholder claims that they perceive to conflict with their own understanding of the goals and values of the school. In particular, conflicting claims elicit sense-making about a new principal’s role vis-à-vis external stakeholders. Across time, a majority of novice principals narrow the scope of their role by coming to terms with taking an unpopular position, setting priorities, and modifying their expectations about the job. Implications for Research and Practice: Our study highlights the cognitive, rather than behavioral, responses that principals have toward conflicting claims. Furthermore, we extend work on the occupational socialization of school principals by showing how conflicting claims shape novice principals emerging understanding of their role vis-à-vis external stakeholders. Our findings have implications for improving principal preparation programs and succession planning.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.