School & District Leadership

How Strong School Leaders Drive Student Success

Olivia Chi and Jalene Tamerat explore the importance of developing effective leadership

High-quality school and district leadership are a critical part of student success. But developing and sustaining effective leaders can present challenges as leaders navigate growing demands and competing priorities. So how can research and practice intersect to support the development of effective leaders?

For this Conversations with the Dean session, Dean Penny Bishop is joined by BU Wheelock’s Olivia Chi, assistant professor in educational leadership & policy studies, and Jalene Tamerat, senior lecturer in educational leadership and director of the Carol Johnson Leadership Fellowship, a partnership with Boston Public Schools.

Chi recently led a Wheelock Educational Policy Center study that explored the careers and outcomes of principals and assistant principals in public schools in Massachusetts. Read Massachusetts School Leader Workforce: 2023 Snapshot [pdf].

Highlights from the Conversation

What makes a leader effective

An effective school leader is someone who can . . . understand what it takes to transform systems, but also who needs to be brought to the table if they’re not already there. They have to have emotional intelligence. They have to have self-awareness. They have to understand the varied perspectives of the people that they encounter and are working with. . . . They also need to understand their communities as a stakeholder group, understand students, and be able to work with and inspire those students and communities to be able to make transformative change.

Jalene Tamerat

Keeping leaders in leadership roles

We see that about two out of three principals remain in a principal role in the state about five years after they’re hired. . . . This makes me wonder: What are the supports in place in these schools and in these districts that help support these principals? And how do we serve those leaders to help give them what they need to stay in their schools if that’s what they want to be doing?

Olivia Chi

Recruitment vs. retention

We . . . have been very adamant about the focus on retention over recruitment because we find that recruitment isn’t always the issue for a lot of schools and districts. . . . So we’re really instructing the district and school leaders to really investigate the conditions on the ground, look at data to be able to identify what are the trends that are happening in your schools: Why are people leaving? What systems do you have in place that either work to move people out of the district versus keeping them in the district?

Jalene Tamerat

Conversations with the Dean are a series of webinars hosted by Dean Bishop that explore some of the most pressing topics in education. Learn more about Conversations with the Dean.