Nationally, 18% of principals turn over each year, yet research has not yet credibly established the effects of this turnover on student and teacher outcomes. Using statewide data from Missouri and Tennessee, we employ a difference-in-differences model with a matched comparison group to estimate arguably causal effects. We find that principal turnover lowers school achievement by .03 SD in the next year, on average. Effects vary by transition type, with larger negative effects for transfers to other schools but no or even positive later effects of demotions of (presumably lower-performing) principals. Principal turnover also increases teacher turnover, but this does not explain the drop in student achievement. Replacement with an experienced successor can largely offset negative principal turnover effects.

Studies link principal effectiveness to lower average rates of teacher turnover. However, principals need not target retention efforts equally to all teachers. Instead, strong principals may seek to strategically influence the composition of their school’s teaching force by retaining high performers and not retaining lower performers. We investigate such strategic retention behaviors with longitudinal data from Tennessee. Using multiple measures of teacher and principal effectiveness, we document that indeed more effective principals see lower rates of teacher turnover, on average. Moreover, this lower turnover is concentrated among high-performing teachers. In contrast, turnover rates of the lowest-performing teachers, as measured by classroom observation scores, increase substantially under higher-rated principals. This pattern is more apparent in advantaged schools and schools with stable leadership.

Research demonstrates the importance of principal effectiveness for school performance and the potentially negative effects of principal turnover. However, we have limited understanding of the factors that lead principals to leave their schools or about the relative effectiveness of those who stay and those who turn over. We investigate the association between principal effectiveness and principal turnover using longitudinal data from Tennessee, a state that has invested in multiple measures of principal performance through its educator evaluation system. Using three measures of principal performance, we show that less-effective principals are more likely to turn over, on average, though we find some evidence that the most effective principals have elevated turnover rates as well. Moreover, we demonstrate the importance of differentiating pathways out of the principalship, which vary substantially by effectiveness. Low performers are more likely to exit the education system and to be demoted to other school-level positions, whereas high performers are more likely to exit and to be promoted to central office positions. The link between performance and turnover suggests that prioritizing hiring or placing effective principals in schools with large numbers of low-income or low-achieving students can serve to lower principal turnover rates in high-needs environments.

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Numerous studies document the inequitable distribution of teacher quality across schools. We focus instead on the distribution of principal quality, examining how multiple proxies for quality, including experience, teachers' survey assessments of leaders, and rubric-based practice ratings assigned by principals' supervisors, vary by measures of school advantage, using administrative data from Tennessee. By virtually every quality measure, we find that schools serving larger fractions of low-income students, students of color, and low-achieving students are led by less qualified, less effective principals. These patterns persist across urban, suburban, and rural settings. Both differential hiring/placement and differential turnover patterns by principal quality across school characteristics contribute to these patterns. Simulation evidence suggests that hiring and turnover vary in relative importance to principal sorting patterns according to the measure of quality examined and that differential principal improvement across contexts may matter as well. Complementary analyses of national survey data corroborate our main results.