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Washington State Institute for Public Policy
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Principal quality

Pre-K to 12 Education
  Literature review updated August 2013.
This program was archived December 2024.

Do school principals directly affect student academic outcomes? The studies in this analysis use a "fixed effects" statistical approach to examine variation in principal quality. The studies focus on principals that move from one school to another; impacts on student outcomes can be estimated for different principals in the same school. The effects presented here represent the impact on test scores from a principal who is one standard deviation above average principal effectiveness.
 
ALL
META-ANALYSIS
CITATIONS

Meta-analysis is a statistical method to combine the results from separate studies on a program, policy, or topic to estimate its effect on an outcome. WSIPP systematically evaluates all credible evaluations we can locate on each topic. The outcomes measured are the program impacts measured in the research literature (for example, impacts on crime or educational attainment). Treatment N represents the total number of individuals or units in the treatment group across the included studies.

An effect size (ES) is a standard metric that summarizes the degree to which a program or policy affects a measured outcome. If the effect size is positive, the outcome increases. If the effect size is negative, the outcome decreases. See Estimating Program Effects Using Effect Sizes for additional information on how we estimate effect sizes.

The effect size may be adjusted from the unadjusted effect size estimated in the meta-analysis. Historically, WSIPP adjusted effect sizes to some programs based on the methodological characteristics of the study. For programs reviewed in 2024 or later, we do not make additional adjustments, and we use the unadjusted effect size whenever we run a benefit-cost analysis.

Research shows the magnitude of effects may change over time. For those effect sizes, we estimate outcome-based adjustments, which we apply between the first time ES is estimated and the second time ES is estimated. More details about these adjustments can be found in our Technical Documentation.

Meta-Analysis of Program Effects
Outcomes measured No. of effect sizes Treatment N Effect sizes (ES) and standard errors (SE) Unadjusted effect size (random effects model)
ES SE Age ES p-value
Test scores
Standardized, validated tests of academic achievement.
11 6 2580828 0.107 0.020 11 0.107 0.001

Citations Used in the Meta-Analysis

Branch, G.F., Hanushek, E.A., & Rivkin, S.G. (2012). Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals (Working Paper 17803). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Chiang, H., Lipscomb, S., & Gill, B. (2012). Is school value-added indicative of principal quality? (Working Paper). Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research.

Clark, D., Martorell, P., & Rockoff, J. (2009). School principals and school performance (Working Paper 38) . National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

Dhuey, E., & Smith, J. (2012a). How important are school principals in the production of student achievement? Retrieved from The Society of Labor Economists website: http://sole-jole.org/13170.pdf.

Dhuey, E. & Smith, J. (2012b). How school principals influence student learning (Working Paper). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto.

Grissom, J.A., Kalogrides, D., & Loeb, S. (2012). Using student test scores to measure principal performance (Working Paper 18568). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Supovitz, J., Sirinides, P., & May, H. (2010). How principals and peers influence teaching and learning. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(1): 31-56.