If you lead a district or sit on a school board, you already feel how fragile principal stability has become. Federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that between the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years, about 11 percent of public school principals left the profession, while only around 80 percent stayed in the same school. That level of churn is especially pronounced in high‑poverty communities and some town districts, where stable leadership is hardest to sustain.
At the same time, a major research synthesis for The Wallace Foundation concluded that principals rank just behind classroom teachers among in‑school influences on student learning, mainly because they shape teaching quality and school climate rather than working with a single class. In other words, the system is losing too many of the people who most affect whether improvement efforts stick.
Gaining a doctorate of educational leadership online offers a practical, evidence‑aligned way to support those leaders. In Philadelphia, for instance, a districtwide principal coaching program launched in 2019 has reached more than 200 leaders, including roughly half of all principals, and only about 5 percent of participants have left their roles, far below national estimates. The key is treating coaching not as a perk, but as part of how you build and protect instructional leadership.
Hero Principal to Supported Leader
For years, many systems have quietly relied on a “hero principal” idea. A single leader holding together instruction, staffing, community expectations, and compliance work with minimal support. The NCES follow‑up survey shows how fragile that is in practice. Among principals serving in 2020–21, 76 percent remained at the same school in 2021–22, 7 percent moved, and 13 percent left the principalship entirely. Turnover has been particularly elevated in districts hit hardest by the pandemic.
That churn would be less alarming if principals sat on the margins of student outcomes. Wallace’s 2021 report, How Principals Affect Students and Schools, found that replacing a below‑average principal with a highly effective one is associated with roughly three additional months of learning in reading and math for the average student each year, nearly matching the effect of moving from an average to a highly effective teacher but across a whole school. The same synthesis links strong principals with higher student attendance and better teacher retention, so leadership instability multiplies into multiple smaller problems.
Coaching changes what it feels like to sit in that role. Instead of expecting a new principal to improvise through difficult staffing calls, data use, and family conflict, coaching turns those moments into structured learning, much like induction does for early‑career teachers. If you already see principals as one of your highest‑leverage investments, then surrounding them with intelligent support is simply bringing your resources in line with your strategy.
Borrowing from the Boardroom (Without Selling Your Soul)
Here’s where your district can get creative. In the private sector, leadership development increasingly pairs formal programs with one‑to‑one executive coaching that focuses on real decisions and behavior change rather than isolated workshops. That model can translate to schools when it’s adapted rather than copied.
A recent doctoral study in a large US urban district examined a coaching program for early‑career principals that drew on International Coaching Federation methods: structured goal setting, intentional questioning, and regular reflection. Using a validated Principal Self‑Efficacy Survey, the study found that participation in coaching significantly predicted principals’ confidence in both instructional leadership and school management, beyond other background variables. A 2025 systematic review in Frontiers in Education came to a similar conclusion: leadership coaching for school leaders tends to strengthen self‑efficacy, resilience, and decision quality when it is job‑embedded, ongoing, and tied to local challenges.
For K‑12, a few specific features of executive‑style coaching are worth adapting:
- A clearly non‑evaluative, confidential relationship, separate from formal supervision, so principals can surface real dilemmas without worrying about immediate consequences.
- Goals aligned with your district’s leadership standards, so coaching reinforces your definition of effective practice instead of creating a parallel agenda.
- A focus on observable behaviors such as how principals run data conversations or follow up on classroom visits, not just general feelings of support.
Most studies track intermediate outcomes like self‑efficacy and leadership practice rather than direct test scores, and it’s important to say that plainly. But because principal effectiveness is so tightly linked to teacher stability and student learning, helping leaders make better decisions, stay in role longer, and feel less isolated is still a high‑value outcome.
Coaching as the Backbone of the Principal Pipeline
The real challenge is durability. A beautifully designed coaching model won’t help if it depends on one grant cycle or one enthusiastic central‑office leader. Wallace’s 2024 report How School Districts Prepare and Develop School Principals, based on a spring 2024 survey of the American School District Panel, found that districts with robust principal pipelines typically align leader standards, selective preparation, hiring, on‑the‑job supports such as mentoring and coaching, and data systems that track leaders over time. Those systems are more likely to report stable leadership and stronger student outcomes than similar districts without a coherent pipeline.
Funding patterns suggest there is room to embed coaching inside that pipeline. A 2023–24 US Department of Education study found that 77 percent of districts using Title II, Part A funds supported professional development, and 59 percent funded PD specifically for principals and other school leaders. Yet across those districts, only a minority of professional learning dollars reached principals; the bulk went to teacher PD. At the same time, an Education Week analysis estimated that districts devote about 3.5 percent of their budgets to professional development, roughly the same share as two decades ago despite higher per‑teacher spending.
Put those pieces together and a strategy appears. Instead of waiting for new money, districts can earmark a defined share of existing PD and Title II‑A funds for leadership coaching and retooled supervision, particularly in high‑needs schools where turnover is highest. The practical question becomes whether coaching is treated as an optional extra or as a built‑in feature of what it means to be a principal in your system.
Choosing a Coached Future for School Leadership
Stepping back, the pattern is clear. National data show that principal attrition remains high enough to threaten continuity, especially in the schools that most need consistent leadership. Two decades of research synthesized for Wallace underline how much principals matter for achievement, attendance, and teacher retention. Newer work on coaching, along with the Philadelphia experience, shows that structured, executive‑style coaching can strengthen principals’ confidence and keep more of them in role. And pipeline and funding studies indicate you already have levers, through Title II‑A and existing PD budgets, to make coaching part of the core support structure rather than a one‑off project.
So the decision in front of you is less about whether coaching works and more about whether you want principal success to depend on individual resilience, or on a system that makes sure every leader has someone in their corner. When the next big change hits your schools, do you want your principals facing it alone, or leading with the steady backing that only a well‑designed coaching system can provide?