Principal Compensation: More Research Needed on a Promising Reform
Center for American Progress
December 2007
Dan Goldhaber
This report describes what we know about principal compensation, and discusses its links to teacher pay reform, as well as the prospects for implementing pay-for-performance for principals, given the political, cultural, and institutional constraints of the K-12 education system.
Few studies link principal attributes directly to student achievement, and of those that do, some are methodologically limited due to data constraints. Tracing the impacts of principals on student achievement is also difficult because their actions may affect students through multiple avenues. For example, principals may directly impact students through curricular choices or indirectly affect students based on decisions they make affecting the quality of teachers in their schools.
Despite these constraints, it is clear that principals have a profound influence: they play a crucial role in shaping their schools’ environment, which in turn influences the quality of teachers in them. Given the importance of principals, and the role of compensation in determining the quality of people who opt to pursue this career path, we need to better understand how principal compensation affects the quality and performance of the nation’s principals. This report recommends four key steps to further our understanding of principal compensation and how it should be reformed.
