Despite the key role that principals play in leading schoolwide change, districts’ efforts to support principals are often limited, particularly in rural settings. In this article, we report the preliminary findings of a cross-district mentoring program for nine midcareer rural school principals. The collaboratively developed human resource initiative was intended to increase the principals’ capacities to use data to lead change in their schools. The program helped the principals address their schools’ improvement needs and determine their own professional learning requirements. Cross-district support was key to the success of the initiative. We conclude with practical implications for implementing similar mentoring programs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.