DID Resource Kit for States, Districts and Schools

Overview: Assessing Leader Effectiveness


Assessing leadership effectiveness is integral component to developing high-quality school leaders and significantly raising student achievement. Leadership evaluation holds great promise in providing educators with the information they need to both improve leadership practices and provide information for accountability purposes.  Leadership evaluation also serves as a system for collecting and responding to information to advance learning-centered leadership and improve school performance. On-the-job evaluations of school leaders can also serve as prompts for improving principal preparation programs, mentoring and induction programs, and ongoing professional development.  Leader assessment is an important step in evaluating school performance and is a key determinant of student success. Linking the assessment to the statewide leadership standards can help states, districts and schools create an aligned performance-bases system.

District Level
School districts are strengthening their efforts to assess leader effectiveness. Districts are using principal evaluation feedback to track the progress of principals toward mastering knowledge and skills needed to improve teaching and learning. Districts are also using evaluations to improve mentoring and induction programs and to identify targeted professional development opportunities and ongoing support. Evaluation feedback is also used to as a report card to licensing institutions on the performance of their graduates to promote and foster continuous improvement of principal preparation programs.


1. Essential Elements

The revised 2008 Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards include evaluating the performance of school leaders. This data is critical to ensuring principals meet leadership standards and ultimately raise student achievement. Following are essential elements of effective principal evaluations:

  • Ensure evaluations are performance based and aligned with statewide leadership standards.
  • Provide feedback from evaluations to school leaders and track individual progress toward mastering knowledge and skills needed to improve student learning and school performance.
  • Use evaluations to identify professional development and supports customized to the needs of individual leaders and schools.
  • Provide evaluation feedback to licensing institutions on the performance of their graduates to promote continuous improvement of preparation programs.
  • Ensure evaluation feedback is used to advance career development and meet requirements for professional-level licensure and certification, mentoring and induction programs and ongoing professional development.



2. Promising Practices

Recognizing a lack of reliable ways to access school leaders’ performance, The Wallace Foundation, in 2005, funded a three-year project housed at Vanderbilt University to develop a set of assessment tools to evaluate the effectiveness of school leadership. The standards-based leadership assessment system, dubbed “VAL-ED,” for Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education, measures critical leadership behaviors of individual or teams of educators for the purpose of diagnostic analysis, performance feedback, progress monitoring, and personnel decisions. While school districts are using evaluation tools to assess leaders, few if any have been developed using rigorous psychometric properties.

The conceptual framework of VAL-ED centers on leadership behaviors and practices and multiple measures of student success (i.e., student attendance, graduate rates, college enrollment, etc.). The assessment tool examines the interconnectedness of two dimensions: six core components of school performance (high standards for student learning, rigorous curriculum, quality instruction, culture of learning and professional behavior, connections to external communities, and performance accountability) and six key leadership processes (planning, implementing, supporting, advocating, communicating, and monitoring). The VAL-ED assessment instrument consists of 72 items, including the six core components and six core processes. The instrument also provides principals, teachers and supervisors with a 350-degree evidence-based assessment in which respondents rate the principal’s effectiveness on a five-point scale. The norm-reference and criterion-reference assessment results can be used annually or more frequently to facilitate a data-based performance evaluation, measure performance growth, and guide professional development.


3. Critical Questions

According to the National Association of State Boards of Education’s (NASBE) 2008 publication, Leveraging Leadership Development through Principal Evaluation, districts should consider the following policy questions:

  • Is assessing school leader effectiveness embedded in your statewide leadership standards or regulations?
  • Does your state or district require formal evaluations of school leaders as part of its ongoing professional development?
  • Does your district use multiple data measures, in addition to student outcomes, to assess principal performance?
  • Are principal evaluation data used to:
  • Provide feedback to school leaders and track individual progress toward mastering knowledge and skills needed to improve student learning and school performance?
  • Identify professional development and supports customized to the needs of individual leaders and schools?
  • Provide feedback to licensing institutions on the performance of their graduates to promote continuous improvement of preparation programs?
  • Advance career development and meet requirements for professional-level licensure?


4. District Resources

Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED)
Summary:VAL-ED is a measurement tool that assesses principals on six core components related to student learning, including setting high standards for achievement and creating a culture of learning and professional behavior in the school. It also measures a principal's ability to plan, implement, support, advocate, communicate, and monitor activities in each of those areas. The measurement tool is aligned with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for school leadership.

Delaware Performance Evaluation System
The purpose of Delaware's Performance Appraisal System for Administrators (DPAS II) was developed by a committee of educators to support continuous improvement, professional development and quality assurance of school leaders.

Goldring, Ellen, Andrew C. Porter, Joseph Murphy, Stephen N. Elliott, Xiu Cravens. (March 2007). Assessing Learning-Centered Leadership: Connections to Research, Professional Standards, and Current Practices. Learning Sciences Institute, Vanderbilt University. Summary: Responding to a longstanding field need, this report and two companion documents preview the basics of a new learning-centered principal assessment system that will allow districts to evaluate how school leaders’ on-the-job behaviors add value to student achievement.

National Association of State Boards of Education. (2008). Leveraging Leadership Development Through Principal Evaluation. Summary: According to Vanderbilt researchers, the tools we have today for assessing leaders are not up to the task. A reliable assessment tool should reinforce standards for current and future leaders; privilege instructional and transformational leadership that raises student achievement and changes organizations; and assist decision-makers in creating strategies to improve leader performance across the district and the state. With Wallace support, Vanderbilt has developed the only research-based, validated “360 degree” assessment involving the principal, superintendent and every teacher in the school. This article provides background on the conceptual framework of The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education, or VAL-Ed, and updates readers on its development process. There are two dimensions of VAL-Ed: six core components of school performance and six key processes of leadership. The article notes that the conceptual framework of VAL-Ed is “anchored in and significantly aligned with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium standards.”

National Association of State Boards of Education. (2008). Iowa's Cohesive Leadership System. Summary: Iowa's Standards for School Leaders (ISSL) have strengthened leader preparation, mentoring and induction, and ongoing professional development. Iowa's standards have also required that all principals and superintendents be evaluated using the ISSL.

National Policy Board for Educational Administration. (2008). Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008. Summary: The 10-year-old education leadership standards in use in more than 40 states have been revised to reflect new knowledge and lessons learned about effective school leadership and the policies needed to support it. This report describes the revised “ISLLC” standards and how they can help leaders meet the growing expectations of their jobs.

Southern Regional Education Board. (May 2001). Leadership Matters: Building Leadership Capacity. Summary: This guide for building education leadership provides strategies that all educators can use to promote learning among both students and professionals, build leadership capacity and create a “culture of effort” in the district. The Southern Regional Education Board’s three-pronged approach asks all adults to become model learners, to offer students and colleagues compelling reasons to learn and to capitalize on mentoring or coaching relationships that generate lasting improvement.

Southern Regional Education Board. (June 2003). Good Principals Are The Key to Successful Schools: Six Strategies to Prepare More Good Principals. Summary:Too often, argues this report from the Southern Regional Education Board, finding qualified school principals is more a matter of chance than deliberate policies. To cultivate successful principals, the report recommends that states and districts redesign training programs; choose people with real potential to enter them; ensure that they receive full licenses only after demonstrating job performance; provide alternative certification programs that will broaden the field of good candidates; and offer support for school leadership teams that have a collective impact on student achievement.

RAND Corporation. (June 2004). The Careers of Public School Administrators. Summary: State data on the career paths of school administrators in North Carolina, Illinois and New York have shed light on several key concerns, including the persistence of gender and racial gaps in administration and the rate of principal turnover. This RAND brief explains the strengths and limitations of the existing information and proposes how states can improve data collection to yield a richer, more illuminating analysis of school administrators’ career trajectories and the quality of their work.