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This paper explores the school leadership career outcomes, timing and educator evaluation of those who complete the Massachusetts Performance Assessment for Leaders (PAL) in comparison with others who did not. It also compares outcomes for those with different PAL score completion requirements.

Using PAL assessment results and state employment data for years 2015 through 2019, the authors examined trends and timing in PAL completers' career advancement into an initial school leader position (assistant principal or principal), by assessment cohort (based on assessment year and passing (cut) score requirements) and with who never had to complete the assessment for licensure (non-PAL completers). Using regression analysis, the authors evaluated potential race/ethnicity and gender differences in advancement. Using chi-square tests of association, the authors compared non-PAL and PAL completers on their demographic attributes and on retention and promotion from assistant principal and on their educator evaluation scores. The authors also examined differences in advancement based on the cut score requirements and preparation pathways.

PAL completers made steady career advances over time and at faster rates than non-PAL completers. Further, PAL completers subject to higher cut score requirements advanced more quickly than those with lower or no score requirements. PAL completers' gender and race/ethnicity seemed to matter less in career advancement than was found in other studies. In 2019, almost half who advanced were employed in the same districts as they had been in 2014 and were more likely to be new leaders in urban districts. When compared with other career-related measures, PAL completers outperformed non-PAL completers who first became school leaders since 2014: they were more likely to be rated as exemplary on educator evaluation and more likely to be retained or promoted after two years in their first school leader position.

Until now little research has existed on the career effects of licensure assessments. Because it requires candidates to demonstrate proficiency in core areas of school leadership work, the PAL assessment appears to be a superior means of screening initial school leaders (based on rate of hiring) and of signaling future performance (based on subsequent educator evaluation ratings) than other assessment forms (such as the School Leader Licensure Assessment [SLLA] exam).

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that explains structural responses to external organizational shocks. The authors illustrate framework dynamics with one district's secondary schools' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conceptual framework imagines structure as emergent, dynamic and responsive to external pressures, as the authors posited in an earlier publication. From an open systems perspective, the authors focus on restructuring for more effective sensemaking and bridging and buffering.

The framework in this paper shows promise for its descriptive power. Interview participants' recollections of their responses to COVID-19 revealed an emergent structure and displayed evidence of crisis management, sensemaking and bridging and buffering.

The intent of this article, consistent with the special issue, is to propose a set of concepts that, together, shed new light on how researchers and leaders might think about structural adaptations to external influences. The conceptual framework shows promise, but has yet to be put to the test with systematic empirical research.

The conceptual framework the authors develop here may serve to guide empirical research that expands knowledge of how school and district structures adapt to external influences. Viewing structure as supportive of adaptation to changing circumstances also informs preparation for and practice of education leadership.

Capturing school and district leaders' recollections shortly after their schools' return to in-person learning is rare in the literature, and examining their reactions from an open systems perspective sheds new light on leadership under stress.

The paper identifies and explores the perspectives of middle school educators regarding the benefits and challenges of an ongoing, emerging school–university partnership. Over five years, professors at one comprehensive, Midwestern university, formed a partnership with a local middle school. While progress has been made to develop the partnership, the authors recognized a lack of shared governance (Essential 7). In particular, they were unsure the partnership was mutually beneficial. The authors interviewed teachers, the principal, assistant principals, guidance counselors, the instructional coach and the youth service center director to gain their perspectives on the partnership.

The authors used an intrinsic, evaluative case study to examine educators perceptions of the benefits and challenges of the partnership (Guba & Lincoln, 1981; Patton, 2002). This approach was used because within this bounded system the authors have an interest in obtaining information to help improve the program and partnership.

Results suggest the partnership was beneficial in a number of ways including hiring of and offering fresh ideas to teachers. Educators also felt there were many benefits for university candidates. Challenges included scheduling, technology access and candidate disposition. Implications are discussed.

Inherent within the research methodology, researchers’ inclusion in the data collection process may affect participants responses.

Researchers discuss the implications of this work, including the role of hiring candidates and clear articulation of a mission for the partnership.

This work adds to research on school site stakeholders’ perspectives on the value of school–university partnerships and includes teachers and the schools’ entire leadership team.

Teacher burnout is a persistent challenge for school principals, complicated by the lack of a proven, repeatable strategy to mitigate burnout. If left unresolved, burnout can adversely affect school culture and student learning, leading to turnover that can compound these harmful effects. Since burnout can vary in severity and frequency, principals can work to mitigate burnout in the moment, seizing the opportunity when burnout is first observed. In this narrative sketch, I provide an overview of my experiences in my development as a principal and how this informed my approach to supporting teachers. I also discuss my experiences as principal in working with teachers at different stages of burnout severity, sharing specific stories and reflecting on both the successes and failures of my efforts, including the use of chocolates and tissues to create an individualized safe space to initiate open dialogue. The title, “Chocolates or Tissues,” is a metaphor that represents my momentary burnout mitigation strategy but may also serve as a metaphor for the need for principals to seek individualized opportunities for resolution in a burnout moment when working with teachers.

Education policies in the United States reinforce social stratification by prioritizing and normalizing middle-class whiteness in schools (Leonardo, 2007; Picower, 2009). The teacher labor market has also become more feminized, making white middle-class women paragons of exemplary educators (Rury, 1989; Tolley & Beadie, 2006). These sociopolitical and historical factors continue to play out in the current U.S. education workforce where 80% teachers are white and 76% of teachers are female (Hussar et al., 2020). Meanwhile, student demographics are shifting with students of color comprising over 50% of the public student population (de Brey et al., 2019). Diversifying the educator pipeline is a well-documented strategy to improve educational outcomes for all students, specifically students of color, and to achieve greater equity and inclusion in public education. However, the retention and promotion of educators of color remains a critical and complex issue.

Thus, looking at the intersection of race and gender in the education workplace, the purpose of this chapter is to highlight the experiences and expertise of women K-12 educators of color to identify best practices for career development. Applying Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) and utilizing modified meta-synthesis methodology, the chapter highlights the experiences of Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Indigenous/Native American women K-12 principals and superintendents to (1) thematize and conceptualize how women of color define their work in education spaces through a PWT lens and (2) understand how PWT themes can illuminate ways to build more diverse and inclusive career pathways for women of color leaders.

This study aims to analyze the experiences of a closed cohort of aspiring leaders and connects the university and school district partnership relationship to building the leadership capacity of the cohort. This study builds on previous literature in district-university partnerships and leadership preparation. Powerful learning experiences (PLEs) and interpersonal-intrapersonal leadership development models serve as frames to examine how aspects of successful leadership preparation programs were present.

This qualitative study was conducted with a team of researchers from the university and school district and relies on data from semi-structured interviews with students from the closed cohort.

Researchers identified three major themes of aspiring leaders' preparation experience: confidence building, reflection and mindset change.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on PLEs by illustrating how this type of partnership creates opportunities for powerful learning experiences for aspiring school leaders.

Guided by Habermas’s three cognitive interests, this paper reviews the studies on school leaders’ emotional labor. It seeks to provide a typology of how researchers inquire about school leaders’ emotional labor by focusing on different understandings, topics and characteristics.

This is a narrative review with 38 studies finally selected for analysis. Guided by Habermas’s three cognitive interests, all the studies were examined carefully and were found to fall into different clusters of understanding of school leaders’ emotional labor.

The review revealed three understandings of school leaders’ emotional labor, namely instrumental understanding, practical understanding and emancipatory understanding. The instrumental understanding treats school leaders’ emotional labor as a tool to effectively control the schools; the practical understanding regards emotional labor as a way to build and maintain relationships and as the process of meaning-making; the emancipatory understanding perceives emotional labor as a site for school leaders’ reflection and action for achieving a more just and self-determined leadership.

This review contributes to the growing literature on school leadership and emotional labor by providing a theory-guided typology and synthesis of the existing understanding of school leaders’ emotional labor, which lays a knowledge base and points out directions for future scholarly inquiries. It also provides practical suggestions for educational policy, school leaders’ practice and leadership training.

This chapter traces the intersectional experiences of one Black woman through pre-Brown schooling, becoming a teacher under a post-Brown court order, hiring teachers as a school leader in a large metropolitan, southern city, to her current position as a leader-educator at a state university. Informed and contextualized by social, political, and historical events associated with the pre-Brown segregation, desegregation, and post-Brown eras, this chapter uses narrative autoethnographic reflectivity and storytelling to understand and analyze the nuances of educational hiring practices through the prism of one Black woman's educational journey. The story is significant because it not only provides evidence of the subtleties and nuances of racism but it also describes the changes in teaching, leadership, and hiring practices in southern public education over the last 60 years.