Assessment to Rate Principal Leadership To Be Field-Tested

Assessment to Rate Principal Leadership To Be Field-Tested
By Lynn Olson

Starting next month, 300 schools nationwide will take part in a field test of a new way to gauge principals’ effectiveness.

Known as VAL-ED, for the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education, the tool has been developed by a team of leadership and testing experts at Vanderbilt University and the University of Pennsylvania to measure leadership behaviors that research has found are associated with student achievement.

“Once principals are on the job, evaluation probably is the key leverage point that you need to get your hands on if you really want to move instructional leadership,” said Joseph F. Murphy, one of the developers of the new measure and a professor of education at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn.

“The bottom line is superintendents can talk until their tongues fall out about learning-centered leadership, or instructional leadership,” he said, “but if they evaluate principals on criteria and standards that are different from that, principals are going to gravitate to the reality, not the language.”

VAL-ED 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 standards for school leaders developed by the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium, which is made up of states.