15 Ways for Principals to Increase Student Achievement

Principals have always had the most direct responsibility for the process of increasing student achievement in their buildings, best accomplished by empowering teachers and encouraging innovation. With the recent passage of new federal legislation that promises an increase in local autonomy, an opportunity exists for schools to engage in personalization of learning guided by educators and not politicians.

The conscious decisions school leaders make as ESSA implementation unfolds to increase student achievement must include the reallocation of finite resources. While that prospect is nothing new to any school principal, an examination of what has worked in a variety of settings will maximize the effectiveness of any efforts to increase the return on investment in people, programs, and products.

Admittedly, principals often must defer to central office administrators when investing in new programs or initiatives. Making a case for those practices best positioned to enhance student outcomes is a seminal responsibility of school leaders, and such recommendations usually coalesce around either increasing revenue or reallocating existing resources.

This series will examine the efforts principals can make in the most practical terms possible to increase student achievement in their schools, beginning with three reallocation ideas and the details behind them. Advocating for any or all of these concepts will enable any school leader to deliver on the promise of continuous improvement.

1.     Class Size and Instructional Coaching 
A considerable body of conflicting research exists on the impact of class size on student achievement, a concept resistant to easy answers or any formulas for success. While it may seem counterintuitive to advocate for larger class sizes, a modest increase in class size for the specific purpose of gaining an instructional coach trained and empowered to assist teachers with innovative practices is one way to increase student achievement.

Most seasoned educators would posit that the quality of instruction is the single biggest factor in prompting student achievement gains, trumping class size and making the case for improving instruction as efficiently and economically as possible as a critical first step in any improvement efforts. Non-evaluative, job-embedded help for teachers to improve their innovative instructional techniques is the most cost-effective way to accomplish that worthy goal. 

2.     Incentivizing Teachers to Embrace Innovation
Everyone can become more skilled at their jobs, and most professionals are constantly improving or at the very least desirous to become more effective in their work. Unquestionably, the prospect of using technology to improve the delivery of instruction has been at the forefront of professional learning activities for the past decade or more in education.

Some teachers embrace the opportunity to learn new techniques and use technology as the tool it can be in that effort, while others inevitably lag behind more eager colleagues. Principals who succeed in increasing the former and decreasing the latter typically tap into the magic of allowing teacher-leaders to drive the process, rather than relying on administrative fiat or “brute sanity” to lead the way.

Another way to incentivize teachers to embrace technology is to remove the fear that accompanies trying something new, fear often bred by the presence or direct oversight of supervisors or administrators rather than colleague faculty. During the predictable implementation dip in productivity as anything new is attempted, teachers must know that they’re welcome to try, measure, fall short of expectations, and repeat the process.

3.     Giving Students a Voice
Experienced principals who have not forgotten the value of monitoring and adjusting practice based on reliable feedback and the data it generates welcome and seek input from students themselves. Whether in the more formalized setting of scheduled meetings between school leaders and students, or by less formal and more frequent classroom visits, gaining the perspective of students as they are learning new things in new ways is invaluable in the process of enhancing student outcomes. 

The successes and frustrations of students, ideally measured by design to generate regular and reliable data, is the best way to monitor effectiveness and modify practice accordingly. Ideally, even the modification process should include input by students, rather that solely relying on an adult prospective for enhancing the delivery of instruction to adolescent learners, especially so at the middle and high school levels.

The next item of this series will deliver three ways to increase revenue as a means of enhancing student achievement, typically something driven more by the central office than by building-level administrators. Nonetheless, the perspective of a principal is invaluable in deciding how to spend finite resources. Just as student input should be regularly solicited and examined, so too should the thoughts of principals be considered when tough decisions can bring desired improvement in the operation of a school.

As principals search for ways to increase academic achievement, consideration is typically given to reallocating existing resources in new ways. Few things in any business happen without an appropriate level of resource support, and public education is certainly not immune from the need to identify funding sources when any new initiative is undertaken. 

Another facet of resource support targeted to increasing student achievement, in addition to reallocating current funds, is the possibility of generating new sources of income. The active pursuit of untapped financial resources can make a finite budget less so, provided the process is carefully designed to include active support from the central office, ideally from the very outset of the effort.

Presented herein are three ideas for principals to consider in their attempts to use creative instinct as a means to providing more funds for advancing student achievement. When principals, sometimes alone and often with colleagues within a district, work with the central office for the specific purpose of causing measurable gains in academic achievement by increasing funding, the results can more than justify the effort.

4.     Outsourcing/Privatizing 
This topic is sometimes viewed as the third rail in any consideration of school funding sources. The emotions surrounding any suggestion that existing employees may be replaced can be fierce, pervasive, and debilitating to a district. If such an approach is considered, full transparency of the reasons for the endeavor must be presented every time the topic is discussed in public.

Long before any public discussion, however, principals and their central office counterparts should have a clear conception of how any additional funds will be spent, along with how the results of the initiative will be measured and reported. Making the case for outsourcing positions in a district is never for the faint of heart, and consideration of this step is sometimes best undertaken during a particularly difficult budget cycle, for obvious reasons of economy and efficiency. 

Many things in a school district are subject to privatization efforts, and any school or district leader who has taken on this task is likely to have encountered the inherent difficulty of trying to save money by eliminating personnel, a task made less unsavory when the approach is tied directly to the educational benefits anticipated. Cultivating majority board support, privately and early in the process, is also critically important if the effort is ultimately to succeed.

5.     Economizing Transportation 
In districts that own and operate their own fleet of buses, the savings to be derived from abandoning that model and hiring a private company can be considerable. Bus purchases, maintaining the fleet, and replacing buses according to stringent federal guidelines are just some of the many things that disappear when a transportation system is privatized.

If support does not exist and cannot be secured to privatize the entire operation, an incremental approach can sometimes represent an acceptable compromise position. Privatizing only athletic bus runs, for example, eliminates concerns about having strangers responsible for the children on a bus. Coaches always accompany their teams on athletic runs, leaving the operation of the bus to be handled in the most cost-effect manner possible.

6.     Economizing Custodial Services 
Parents often equate school safety with having district employees serve as custodial staff, in most cases resulting from a long tradition of employing familiar faces while children are present each day. Most of us can still recall the friendly custodial staff of our own school experience, likely making this a contentious prospect.

There is a compromise position, however, that can save substantial sums of operating capital each year that can then be used for increasing student achievement. The companion to privatizing only the athletic runs of a district is to privatize only the evening custodial services in a building. This approach, while saving less money than a more comprehensive approach, nonetheless eliminates concerns about student safety. 

Principals who suggest ways to save operating funds for the purpose of using those savings to increase student achievement must work with the central office and, tangentially, with the board of education. They must also be armed with a clear conception of and concrete explanation for how the savings will be used, including a plan for generating data and using it to guide future decisions on any initiative.

Part 3 of this series will revisit the prospect of reallocating existing human and capital resources to increase student achievement. Principals who are always thinking of ways to improve their own practice, especially in the area of spending funds targeted directly toward increasing student achievement, can make a substantial difference in the lives of their teachers and the success of their students.

Principals make decisions every day that are intended to improve student outcomes and enhance academic achievement, often involving the reallocation of existing human or financial resources as part of the process. The human resources of a school building represent the best that public education has to offer to students, the caring adults who regularly change the lives of children and help them to succeed in school and in life.

Spending finite discretionary resources in ways likeliest to increase academic achievement of students is the natural companion to making wise personnel decisions. Even the best programs and products will fail without great teachers to implement them, a fact that provides the best argument possible for recruiting outstanding teachers and for the commitment to provide continuous professional learning for them in a climate of innovation.

Teachers who are eager to continue their own professional learning are those most apt to increase student achievement, ideally supported by principals who encourage them to take risks and who model that philosophy in their own professional practice. What follows are three specific ideas principals can adopt and adapt in their buildings to ensure that innovation and personalization characterize professional practice in their schools every day.

7.     Leadership Training for Teachers
Principals who have not forgotten what it was like to teach every day are also those most likely to invest in developing the leadership qualities of their teachers. Few principals began their administrative careers without the active interest of a former principal in their own advancement, and are often eager to pay forward that interest by helping others to reach their professional goals.

For those teachers who are interested in making the transition to administration, leadership opportunities provided while they are still in the classroom are invaluable in helping them along. Successful principals understand the obligation to cultivate the leadership abilities of their teachers, whether by sharing scheduling tasks, budgeting procedures, or any other responsibilities that comprise an administrative role. 

8.     Creative Scheduling Practices
Principals at every level have some connection to scheduling. Although creating a master schedule at the high school level may technically be a function of the guidance department, oversight is critical to ensure that the educational priorities of the principal are embedded within the final product. At the elementary and middle school levels, the process tends to involve the more direct participation of principals at all stages.

Principals who are sensitive to what teachers prefer in a final schedule are careful to ask for those preferences long before the scheduling process begins, and in so doing they evidence a level of concern that teachers universally appreciate. While it is certainly true that not every preference can be accommodated, the mere fact that teachers were asked for input and that input was considered during the scheduling process can predictably result in better morale among teachers.

Organizing an elementary schedule to include common planning time among grade level colleagues is an excellent way for best practices to be shared organically. The same can be said for middle schools that engage in creating teams of teachers and a schedule that supports regular, daily meetings of team member colleagues.

High schools represent a larger challenge in scheduling common planning time, given the mixed grade level nature of many high school classes. Every opportunity for scheduling efficiencies at the high school level, however, should be embraced for the same reasons of collaboration that exist elsewhere in a district.

9.     Reinvent the Faculty Meeting 
Few things encourage the simmering resentment of teachers more than faculty meetings that feature too much administrator-talk and too little colleague-interaction. Regular faculty meetings may either be an embedded expectation, a contractual obligation, or more typically both. Having a meeting, and having a meeting not dreaded by teachers, are two very different realities often occurring within the same district but at different buildings.

For principals who have not yet adopted an “Ed Camp” model for faculty meetings, an investigation of this approach in any number of online sources is one sure way to make faculty meetings more meaningful for teachers. While a true Ed Camp happens during otherwise free time and is completely voluntary for attendance purposes, the aspect that includes teacher-experts presenting to colleagues is a part of the Ed Camp philosophy that is readily adaptable for any purposely redefined faculty meeting.

Principals who memo staff with what they would otherwise say at a faculty meeting, and instead of talking create a sign-up sheet for teachers who volunteer to present on a topic of professional interest to them, are taking the wise and productive step to reinventing the faculty meeting in ways that will assuredly enhance innovation more than the old and tired meetings of days long past.

Using technology to meet virtually is another innovative practice that demonstrates for teachers the kind of risk-taking in which principals often wish their teachers would engage. At any level, department or grade level meetings can also be accomplished using available technology, again demonstrating a commitment to the future rather than an adherence to the past.

Part 4 of this series will present an additional set of revenue generating ideas that principals can either champion or implement themselves, in the continued interest of increasing student achievement. The opportunities to innovate for the purpose of that noble goal are limitless, especially for principals who understand their obligation to lead by example. 

Gains in student achievement as the result of targeted administrative action are typically the result of the efforts of many people, including instructional staff, parents, and students themselves. Rarely do gains happen without the concerted activity of all three groups, and even more rarely without the resource support they require.

Human and financial resources, marshaled by design to include measurement of outcomes and analysis of data, can cause specific gains in student achievement. Principal leadership is a critical component for success, and effective principals either reallocate existing resources or develop new streams of resource support when they tackle new projects or implement new programs.

Any revenue generating idea implemented at the building level needs the early and active support of those in the central office. With that proviso in mind, presented herein are three more ideas for principals to either champion or implement themselves in the pursuit of gains in student achievement.

10.  Fees
During difficult budget cycles, districts often institute a fee structure for aspects of the total school program that in times of financial abundance are absorbed in the operating budget. Technology fees, sports participation fees, and club/activities fess are three common sources of additional financial support for the daily operation of a district. 

Rather than implementing such fees to weather a difficult budget, some districts choose to implement fees and target the resulting income for a specific purpose, none more noble than increasing student achievement. The ability to show tangible increases in specific student outcomes can often ameliorate the initial ill will that fees can generate, especially if those gains represent a persistent area of concern within a given district or school. 

11.  Technology Device Procurement 
Districts have been grappling with the need to provide access to technology in a cost effective manner for many years, and the methodology of putting devices in the hands of students typically varies between one-to-one device initiatives and a version often described as a “bring your own device” approach.

In less affluent districts, the need to provide devices for students is often unmistakable. No student should be denied the daily use of current technology by an accident of birth circumstances, and the purchase of devices in such districts can occupy a significant portion of a finite budget. The proliferation of Smartphone technology, however, has begun to change the landscape even in the poorest districts.

Students who arrive to school each day with a Smartphone in their pockets carry with them a device that can help them learn, and progressive schools and districts are constantly developing new ways to manage student use of their own devices for legitimate educational purposes. School should never have been the only place where students don’t have the right to use their Smartphones to learn new things. 

Affluent districts that continue to buy devices for their students, many or most of whom would if given the option prefer to use their own, are squandering an opportunity to use device money for the purpose of increasing student achievement. Such districts continue to implement a 20th century model of technology use in a new century, often citing absurd reasons of standardization or control in defense of this outdated practice. 

Courageous school leaders, if they tread lightly and arm themselves with facts devoid of hyperbole or emotion, can and should lead their buildings steadily into the direction of a BYOD approach. Every dollar not spent on buying or replacing outdated devices is a dollar that can instead be spent on increasing student achievement. This is a fight with taking on, especially when armed with a specific plan for how to spend money saved by not purchasing devices less powerful and sophisticated than the ones students often have sitting in their pockets while at school. 

12.  Textbooks
Textbooks are expensive. Anyone who has gone to college or pays for someone currently enrolled can testify to the outrageous costs associated with the purchase of printed books that have changed little in the last several decades, books that began the path toward their own obsolescence the day they arrived at school.

Digital textbooks are often less expensive and carry with them several advantages over their antiquated printed counterparts, not least of which is the ability to include regular updates to content as events warrant. Digital sources of academic content, initially something textbook publishers often “included” with the purchase of printed texts, are overtaking old methods of providing content to students.

School leaders who are comfortable negotiating the best possible financing options for digital texts, and who are adept at encouraging teachers to see them as the rightful future of content delivery, can use savings derived from buying fewer consumable textbooks for targeted efforts to increase academic achievement. Part of the transition from printed to digital texts must include efforts to bring all stakeholders along for the ride. Highlighting anticipated gains in student achievement is an excellent way to frame the debate.

The last item in this series will capture three additional ways to either reallocate existing human and financial resources or create new sources of revenue for the purpose of increasing student achievement. Targeting as many district resources as possible specifically on advancing student achievement is one sure way to gain the active support of teachers, board members, parents, and students themselves in this worthy endeavor.

Principals are routinely responsible for virtually everything that happens in their schools, part of the comprehensive nature of the position that is both a joy and a challenge. Especially at the elementary level that typically lacks layers of guidance services or a full time vice principal, a principal can be found on any given day supervising student lunches or intervening with a troubled student or staff member.

No responsibility is more critical to the mission of a school, however, than increasing student achievement. Though principals must often create the time needed for this worthy cause by compromising other aspects of the job, guiding the process of improving student outcomes is why many principals sought the role and left the classroom.

Improving student achievement is linked to the resources necessary to make it happen, and principals either reallocate existing human and financial resources or participate in the process of identifying and cultivating new sources of funding. Presented herein are three more ways principals may use their authority as instructional leaders to enhance the learning experience of their students, each by re-evaluating one facet of the overall operation of their schools.

13.  Transportation 
In the vast majority of districts that transport students by bus each day, opportunities often exist to economize routes, supervision, or the movement of students from buses to classes in a more efficient manner. Most principals inherit the procedures for transporting students from their predecessors, and the inclination to leave things as they have always been is often and understandably the first approach taken by principals new to their role.

Any operation that uses fewer staff members for supervision but nonetheless keeps students safe at every stage of a process is worth considering and implementing. Keeping close tabs on what these procedures cost before and after economization efforts is the best way to conserve actual dollars and redirect them for instructional improvement efforts. The collection of data is as critical in this realm as it is in the process of determining gains in student achievement.

14.  Supervision
Prudent supervision of students at all times by certificated staff is a cornerstone of school and district administration, an expensive and necessary fact of life in schools made more so by the occasionally tragic events that sometimes occur at school. Caring for many hundreds of students for seven or more hours, knowing their whereabouts at all times, and getting them safely to and from school and home every day is a huge logistical undertaking.

Again a product of past practice, principals tend to perpetuate procedures that have been in place more automatically than perhaps they could or should, especially if reducing personnel costs of supervision can be accomplished without compromising the safety of students or staff. A detailed study of supervision, especially during non-instructional portions of every school day, usually leads to the ability to trim costs associated with this aspect of school operations and reallocate savings derived to bolster student achievement efforts.

15.  Before and After School Care 
Most schools have some provisions in place for the care and supervisor of students before school begins each day and after classes end, providing working parents with a much-needed and typically inexpensive option for child care each day. Many programs exist in partnership with other local organizations and are often overseen by personnel not directly associated with the district.

Whether before and after care is a direct function of district operations or overseen by a partner organization, the existence of this service to parents and students almost universally presents an opportunity for study and revision for the express purpose of economizing the delivery services and developing new funding sources for increasing student achievement.

The work required to study current practices of transportation services, supervision of students during the school day, and before and after care of those students is considerable, as are the resources that often result from undertaking that work. The best way to manage the task is to create a team of interested parties, perhaps including parent representation especially for any examination of before and after care practices, to discuss and discover what works well and what can be done more efficiently or profitably.

As in all other aspects of school administration, gathering and analyzing data can be the hinge point between success and failure in the effort to increase student achievement. Principals who make the time to reallocate existing resources or exhibit the creativity to identify and cultivate new sources of funding are those who position themselves and their students for success.