A new report suggests that principal walkthroughs do not improve student performance.
For years, one of the key debates about principalship has been their role in “instructional leadership”. In other words, how much should principals be doing to directly impact student instruction and what exactly should they be doing if it is so important? Principal walkthroughs are one of the key methods by which it has been thought that principals can improve instructional leadership.
According to the new study by Jason Grissom, Susanna Loeb, and Ben Master, which closely tracked the daily behaviors of 100 Miami-Dade county principals, student learning outcomes do not show a positive correlation to principal walkthroughs.
The caveat to this study, which will make it completely meaningless in the eyes of some, is that student outcomes were measured by student test scores.
Here are some excerpts from UVA education professor Dr. Daniel Willingham:
A terrific new study by Jason Grissom, Susanna Loeb, and Ben Master shed light on the role of instructional leadership. It’s the method that sets this study apart. Instead of simply asking principals “how important is instructional leadership to you?” or having them complete time diaries, researchers actually followed 100 principals around for a full school day, recording what they did.
The researchers also had access to administrative data from the district (Miami-Dade County in Florida) about principals, teachers, and students that could be linked to the observational data. The outcome measure of interest was student learning gains, as measured by standardized tests.
The results showed that principals spent, on average, 12.6 percent of their time on activities related to instruction. The most common was classroom walkthroughs (5.4%) and the second was formal teacher evaluation (2.4%).
Some school characteristics were associated with variations in the amount of time principals devoted to instructional leadership. More time was spent in schools with lower-achieving students, with students from lower-income homes, and with a higher percentage of students of color.
As to the primary question of the study, time spent on instructional leadership was NOT associated with student learning outcomes.
But once “instructional leadership” was made more fine-grained, the picture changed.
Time spent coaching teachers–especially in math–was associated with better student outcomes. So was time spent evaluating teachers and curriculum.
But informal classroom walkthroughs–the most common activity–were negatively associated with student achievement. This was especially true in high schools.
In a follow-up analysis, the researchers evaluated these data in light of what the principals said about how teachers view classroom walkthroughs. The negative association with student achievement was most evident where principals believed that teachers did not view walkthroughs as opportunities for professional development. (Other reasons for walkthroughs might be to ensure that a teacher is following a curriculum, or to be more visible to faculty.)
Although the researchers suggest that their results should be considered exploratory, they do suggest a general principle of instructional leadership that fits well with one overarching principle of learning: feedback is essential. Instructional leadership activities that offer meaningful feedback to teachers may help. Those that don’t, will not.
So, it seems that, in large part, determining the efficacy of principal walkthroughs demands first agreeing both on what exactly the role of the principal should be as well as on what exactly positive student outcomes are.
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To read the study, see: http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/effective%20instructional%20time%20use.pdf
