New Report: Principal Mobility in Philadelphia Schools

Posted by Philadelphia Education Research Consortium on January 22, 2019

When a principal leaves a school, research suggests that students tend to suffer. And a new study of K-12 schools in Pennsylvania shows that principals are more mobile in big, urban districts. In a typical year, about one in five Pennsylvania principals (19%) leave their schools, according to a deep dive into principal mobility by the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (PERC). But in places like Philly (24%), Pittsburgh (24%), Erie (22%), and Reading (27%) that number is more like one in four. When you zoom in on charter schools in Philadelphia, the figure rises to more than one in three (35%). Pennsylvania’s total principal mobility rate in the study period — 2007-08 through 2015-16 — was slightly above the national average of 17.5 percent. The authors of the PERC study say their work is just a starting point, a way to raise questions that could be answered by further research. Keystone Crossroads here breaks down five eye-raising trends contained in the new data.

https://whyy.org/articles/principal-turnover-highest-in-pa-cities-and-school-leaders-may-be-getting-whiter-too/

Original PERC report: https://www.phledresearch.org/principal-mobility