Our primary purpose is to examine the degree to which state equity plans identify the distribution of principals and principal turnover as factors influencing three leadership mechanisms that affect student access to effective teachers-namely, hiring of teachers, building instructional capacity of teachers, and managing teacher turnover. Research Design: This study relies on document analyses of 52 plans (50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) submitted by states in 2015 to the U.S. Department of Education. These plans included the identification of root causes of the inequitable access to educators within a state as well as proposed solutions to address the inequitable access. Findings: We found that, while 27% of states mentioned the distribution of principals and 48% of states mentioned principal turnover, less than 10% of states connected these two factors to access to effective teachers for each of the three mechanisms. Furthermore,

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This study explores ways in which salary can be structured to reduce leadership shortages by investigating how comparative wage dispersion and position alter the relationship of salary to principal turnover. Using a seventeen-year longitudinal dataset covering over sixteen thousand principals in Texas, discrete-time hazard models demonstrate that principals are highly sensitive to salary comparisons over and above basic salary. Higher comparative position is associated with significantly reduced turnover risk, while wider dispersion is associated with a significantly increased turnover risk. Interactions demonstrate that dispersion and position act in tandem to create conditions where principals have particularly high turnover risk. These results have implications for strategies to address turnover through district salary structures, as well as broader notions of how wage tournaments operate in the principal labor market.

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PurposeSchools in resource challenged communities require principal approaches that break patterns of low expectations and low student achievement. This study identifies Alabama’s “outlier” schools that have been consistently successful in attaining higher student outcomes than their neighboring schools despite their similar community conditions. Then, it describes the perspectives and practices of principals leading these outlier schools. The purpose of this paper is to discuss findings on principal leadership in five of Alabama's outlier schools.Design/methodology/approachIn a sequential, explanatory mixed-methods design, the authors first use state administrative data to identify which Alabama schools had better results than their peers as evidenced by standardized testing between 2016 and 2020. Then, through semi-structured interviews, they examine the beliefs and approaches of five principals who are currently leading an outlier school. The frame of contextual leadership provides a deeper understanding of how these principals navigate successful schools in the midst of challenging community influences.FindingsThe evidence demonstrated that (1) community factors of low education, high unemployment, single-parent households and generational poverty are associated with considerably lower levels of student growth and achievement; (2) measured school and community factors do not explain student growth and achievement in these outlier schools; (3) outlier principals have a realistic view of their community’s challenges but focus on supporting students through a context sensitive, relational approach that emphasizes assets over limitations.Originality/valueWhile research has attended to leadership in turnaround schools and effective schools, there is little literature on principals leading in positive outlier schools. This study contributes to the literature on school leadership in resource challenged contexts by identifying high performing, resource challenged schools and then showing the perspectives and practices of principals who lead in schools that have consistently achieved better than expected student outcomes. It extends the construct of “outlier leadership” in education and connects it to contextual leadership in schools.