Principals, Perverse Incentives and Safe Harbor

Yesterday’s post described a program in New Jersey that teaches principals how to support teachers who nurture and stretch the minds of young children. A year ago, we ran a podcast about a similar program in Pennsylvania.  And Illinois passed a law last summer requiring  principal preparation programs to include coursework in child development.

Clearly, momentum is building to improve the way elementary principals are trained. Today we’re examining a new policy brief, “PreK-3^rd: Principals as Crucial Instructional Leaders,” that makes a strong case for why these programs matter and what policies get in the way. 

The brief, published by the Foundation for Child Development and written by Sara Mead, envisions principals as people who are not just in charge of disciplining kids and managing the building, but who are deeply involved in creating a culture of strong teaching throughout the school. These principals embrace the early grades (including pre-k and kindergarten) as full partners in the collaborations and alignment work that should be underway throughout the school. (Full disclosure: The Foundation for Child Development is one of our funders, and Mead is a former director of the Early Education Initiative.)

The brief is particularly helpful in describing how to remove the many barriers to successful principal leadership in the early years. I want to zoom in on one of its calls to action:  “Get the incentives right.” As Mead writes:

“Current accountability systems create perverse incentives for principals to focus on remediation and triage in the later elementary grades that are subject to testing, rather than building solid foundations in the early elementary school years.”

Mead argues for the use of what’s known as  “safe harbor” from the federal penalties that come with unacceptable test results in the later grades. This would allow schools that are making gains with their youngest students to avoid immediate sanctions for the underperformance of their older students. Importantly, Mead argues that this safe harbor should only exist for three to five years, when those younger children have grown to become the third graders that are tested under the federal guidelines.

In February, the Early Education Initiative’s brief  – “12 Ideas for Early Education in the 112^th Congress”   – put forth a similar recommendation. We argued that elementary schools should get credit under current No Child Left Behind rules for showing evidence that they are using data to improve instruction in the early grades.

We wrote that policymakers should:

“consider using existing safe harbor provisions to exempt certain schools from sanctions on a temporary basis. These provisions should enable schools to get credit for making progress on two fronts: gathering data on the progress being made by students in the early grades (including progress in their social-emotional development) and using that data to fine-tune their instructional strategies and spot children who need extra help.”

When Congress gets around to reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – also known as No Child Left Behind – it will likely make some major changes to the way schools are sanctioned for poor performance on state tests. We hope that lawmakers will consider ideas like this to give principals credit for paying attention to early education.  A re-alignment of incentives – coupled with federal programs to increase principals’ knowledge of early childhood, such as the one proposed by Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) last fall with support from the National Association for Elementary School Principals – could make a major difference in turning around elementary schools and building a strong foundation for their students’ later academic success.