Bridging the leadership gap: Portland State and Portland Public Schools pilot Future Principals Program

The nationwide teacher shortage has made headlines regularly in recent years. Low pay, heavy workload, difficult classroom dynamics and lack of support for educators have fueled the growing crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated these issues. 

But while the spotlight has been focused largely on teacher attrition, principals have been leaving K-12 schools at alarming rates as well. 

One could argue that being a school leader has never been easy, but when you add stressors like navigating an ongoing global health crisis, polarized politics, staffing shortages, low pay, student learning loss and school violence into the mix, the position has become untenable for many. 

The National Association of Elementary School Principals reported that one in five principals stepped down between the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. They predict that another 70% of K-8 principals will depart in the next three years. 

The landscape in Portland, Oregon schools mirrors the national trend.

Partnering to close the gap

To address this issue and help build a pipeline of qualified school principals, Portland State University (PSU) and Portland Public Schools (PPS) have partnered to create the Future Principals Program. The program aims to prepare the next generation of leaders by identifying promising assistant principals in the district and preparing them to become impactful and enduring principals. 

Madhu Narayanan, assistant professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at Portland State, noted that a big challenge for assistant principals is that they’re typically so busy managing the day-to-day administration at their schools that they don’t get to practice the leadership skills needed to be an effective principal; and they don’t have time away from their buildings for professional development.

This innovative workshop series for a diverse group of principal candidates is held on PSU’s campus at the College of Education and features a different leadership task each month. The assignments are designed to mirror the challenges that principals regularly face in the field so that, come hiring time, job candidates can easily articulate their vision for the school and their approach to creating a strong school culture and leading change.

In a recent session, each aspiring principal in the class presented a three-minute personal statement on leadership identity. Their appeal needed to clearly communicate who they are as leaders, their beliefs, core values and how they communicate all of this to others.

Dianna Collins, assistant principal at Sellwood Middle School, began her statement with a personal reflection from childhood. She shared how long car rides to school each morning with her mother, a first-generation college student and elementary educator of 35 years, inspired her passion for education.

“My mom lives through me every day at work,” Collins said. “When I see my students, I know that I want to give them that gift that she gave me.”

Each presentation was followed by brief discussion and actionable feedback from the cohort. This open dialogue is a key part of the instruction model. For many of the assistant principals in the group, the chance to be part of a learning community of their peers is what drew them to the program.

The learning community

Collins, who inherited her mother’s dedication to education, is one of eight assistant principals in the current cohort. Leadership is a quality she’s long been interested in and focused on developing, so she jumped at the chance to join the Future Principals Program.

“It's been a very supportive environment between the students in this program, and the mentors have been incredible too,” she said. 

Program mentors introduce reading and research to help students think critically and grow. The readings spark dialogue, providing students with an opportunity to challenge each other while also learning from one another. 

Collins appreciates the organic discussions that arise from the assigned articles, where students share their school experiences and analyze them collectively as a group. “I love hearing about what other people are going through and saying, ‘Okay, what would I do in that situation?’” she said.

Isidro Interian Ucan is the assistant principal at Lent Elementary which has a Spanish/English Dual Immersion Program. He wants to be a principal one day, and was attracted to the program’s cohort model as well as its emphasis on equity and social justice. He believes that it’s time to disrupt the status quo and is passionate about bringing voices of marginalized families into decision making in public schools. 

“I am a person of color, a leader of color who knows that there are barriers in my journey that I feel I need to make sure that I confront in a collective way,” said Interian Ucan. “I think this cohort will help me because we are learning with each other and we are bringing ideas to the table that we will use in our leadership.”

A focus on racial equity is fundamental to the program and its curriculum — recognizing the need to not only diversify the principal pool, but also ensure racial and social justice awareness competency among all school leaders.

Learning from his peers and gaining visibility into how leadership is being implemented in other PPS schools has been incredibly valuable, Interian Ucan said. The program is not only helping him build an equity leadership approach to his work, but has given him time to self-reflect.

Afforded this opportunity to reflect, Interian Ucan sees himself as a capable educator and a leader of color who can be in a principal position. He’s also thankful for the program’s mentors and instructors. 

“Having great educators who are the lead in this is key, because they are setting a pathway for leaders who want to become future principals,” he said. “I value the people who are ahead of me and are bringing us forward to make that bridge.”

Addressing the leadership crisis

While this pilot program hopes to begin building a pipeline of qualified leaders to take the helm in PPS schools as early as next fall, the problem is more widespread.

“It's really a crisis in urban education, and particularly in schools that serve students of color across this country,” said Narayanan, who is one of the program’s instructors. “What's kind of cool about this program is that we can lay the seeds, and build on the foundations of other programs across the country, to address a problem that really needs a long-term solution.”

Dawn Gillis, director of professional learning and leadership for PPS, said that while being a principal may not be the most popular job right now, it’s an incredibly important one. 

“Teachers are amazing, and what they do in that classroom makes or breaks the academic success of any kid. But it's the principal who sets the conditions in the building for the teachers to be able to do that magic in the classroom,” said Gillis, who is facilitating the Future Principals Program alongside Narayanan and Tina Acker, Wallace RECPI Project Manager and Educator Equity Coordinator at PSU.

In education and leadership, things change quickly. Methods from just a few years ago may already be outdated and ineffective, and research and new approaches to meet the demands of current school environments haven’t kept pace. Gillis, Narayanan and Acker kept these issues top of mind while designing the program to be relevant for today's leaders.

“Until the principal licensure programs get up to speed with the current research and new tactics, the district has to play a part in filling that gap in what leaders need to know and be able to do,” Gillis said. “That's why we want to work very closely together. We want to co-facilitate and co-design everything, because Madhu and Tina are present in the university, and I'm in the schools and with our team.”

Rather than waiting for the textbooks to catch up, the trio identified best practices based on the latest research and field experience. They’ve taken inspiration from similar initiatives in other districts. They also attend regular industry training sessions and participate in professional learning communities with education leaders across the country — from California to New York to Texas — who are all working to find long-term solutions to address similar problems.

Leading with an equity lens

The Future Principals Program is part of a larger effort, funded by the national Wallace Grant. The five-year $8.2 million grant was awarded to PPS in 2021 and PPS partnered with PSU and Lewis and Clark College to implement the grant — dedicated to developing a strong equity-centered principal pipeline for K-12 schools in Portland.

The first cohort to come out of the PPS-PSU collaboration has met monthly since the start of winter term and will wrap up in June.

Curriculum includes readings, case studies, developing and communicating a personal mission and leading a change initiative at their school sites. The steady focus is on leadership — defined as fostering change in the school community — rather than management or administration. 

“Keeping the school running, keeping the lights on and the buses coming on time are all important, but we want to talk about deep systemic change in school,” Narayanan explained. “We are pushing to create a leadership vision.”

With a new leadership task assigned each month, students develop a portfolio over the course of the winter and spring term that will strengthen their candidacy for jobs in the district this summer.

One of the early tasks of defining who you are as a leader may not seem like the most important assignment, but it’s more challenging than you might imagine, Narayanan said. “It’s essential because as a leader you're constantly having to tell the story of yourself, your purpose, your school, and to help others find purpose in their work.”

Or as Gillis put it, “you must know who you are, be able to read a room and instantly connect.”

In another assignment, assistant principals are tasked with collecting a range of data from their school that they analyze to identify gaps and strengths, or areas that could benefit from deep systemic change.

The culminating leadership task requires the design of an intervention that will show some meaningful change in some aspect at the assistant principal’s school. 

Perhaps most importantly, woven through each lesson, is the theme of moving and leading with an equity lens.

“Principals are held accountable for making sure every student succeeds,” Gillis said. “So if you don't have an equity lens, you can't help every student succeed. Because kids who don't look like you, a lot of times, they're overlooked.”

Leading with an equity lens means we have to see color, she added. “We have to learn folks’ lived experiences because once you know people, like really know them, and their lived experiences, you'll be able to lead them effectively. Period.” 

Successful principals have the ability to create a sense of belonging for every student, educator and family in the school community. As such, it’s a key skill the Future Principals Program hopes to instill, along with the ability to dismantle bias and racism when it comes up. 

Mentorship, ongoing support and continuous professional development are key to building a pipeline and sustaining leadership excellence. The reality for new principals begins when they get the keys to their school and open the gate on day one. Textbooks can’t fully prepare them for that moment. That’s where The Future Principals Program can help ensure they have a smooth transition — especially since the first days and early years so often determine the success of a leader.

Vision for the future

It's time to catch up with some of the big changes in the field of leadership. The demands of being a principal have transformed dramatically in the last 10 years, and even more so since the pandemic. Systemic disparities persist in public schools across the region as well. 

But in the Future Principal’s Program, there’s hope.

“The participants are excited to be in a cohort together; supporting each other in a safe environment and working with us to consider their next steps as they try to move into the principalship in the next year or two,” Acker said.

“There's a passion in this group, there’s a thirst to know more. It seems like they want to lead the charge of making sure every child succeeds, especially the ones who are historically overlooked,” Gillis said.

Though the inaugural cohort is a modest size, program leaders are pleased with how things are going and have bigger visions for the future. 

Narayanan hopes that if the program demonstrates value, it could pave the way for PSU to strengthen its leadership training and course offerings and to collaborate with more school districts to develop future leaders.

“I'm really excited about this program,” he said. “Opportunities like this are not offered widely — and assistant principals’ need for a support system is not going away.”