School districts increasingly are relying on principal supervisors to ensure that principals are prepared to meet the growing demands of their jobs, a report from the Council of the Great City Schools finds.

Commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, the report, Rethinking Leadership: The Changing Role of Principal Supervisors (84 pages, PDF), examined the roles and responsibilities of principal supervisors in major school districts across the country and found that they oversee an average of twenty-four schools each while continuing to have extensive administrative oversight responsibilities from past structures or roles.

Based on a survey as well as site visits to six districts participating in the foundation’s $75 million Principal Pipeline Initiative, the report also found that while many principal supervisors were former principals, many lack experience as HR, operations, or central office instructional administrators; that they rarely are selected or evaluated based on a well-defined set of competencies; and that they do not always have access to the kind of instructionally focused professional development they need to help principals become strong instructional leaders.

“It’s clear that it will take much more than training to help these leaders become more effective,” said Jody Spiro, director of education leadership at the Wallace Foundation. “Districts need to build systems that limit supervisors’ competing responsibilities and that do a better job matching supervisors with schools so they can support all of the principals they oversee.”