Personally Engaged Principals

Over the past 30 years, research on school effectiveness and instructional leadership has largely concluded that a principal’s effect on student achievement often goes unnoticed.

That’s a cause for concern, given that educational organizations like the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform have found that fewer than one-third of America’s eighth grade children can read and write at grade level and with proficiency.

The impact that principals have on their students’ academic performance and educational careers is important, says Ron Yoshida, professor of educational leadership. But he admits that, more often than not, the impressionable role that principals play is often overshadowed by other factors, like a school’s culture, the influence of the administration or a school’s classroom environment.

New research from Lehigh’s College of Education suggests it a dangerous oversight. The work is based on the doctoral dissertation of Jack Silva, the director of curriculum and instruction at Souderton Area School District (Pa.) and the recipient of the college’s Stoudt Dissertation Award for best dissertation in 2009-2010. Yoshida and George White, professors of educational leadership, co-chaired the dissertation.

The study found that non-proficient eighth-grade students who held one-on-one discussions with a principal before a state reading test showed reading gains significantly larger than students in the control condition who held discussions after the state reading test.the discussions included a review of 2008 reading scores and the setting of goals for the students’ upcoming 2009 reading scores.