Principals on Student Learning

This section of the Brown Center Report offered an international perspective on the role of the school principal as an instructional leader. Principals’ responses to TIMSS surveys were examined at the national level, along with test scores in mathematics. Principals in three consistently high achieving countries—Finland, Hong Kong, and Japan—are especially reluctant to give advice. Principals in Korea, on the other hand, another perennially high achieving country, are more activist in this regard. U.S. principals of schools with a fourth grade (typically an elementary school) are about average in terms of giving instructional advice but register above the international average on activities related to school goals. American principals of schools with an eighth grade (typically a middle school) appear about average on all four surveyed activities.

Loveless, T. (2016). The 2016 Brown Center Report on American education: How well are American students learning?: With sections on reading and math in the Common Core era, tracking and advanced placement (AP), and principals as instructional leaders. Brown Center Report, 3(5), 1-36. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Brown-Center-Report-2016.pdf