Empowering School Leaders: Highlights from Erica Beal's Testimony to DC Council
Dear Friends of School Leader Lab,
We wanted to share an update about our continued advocacy for school leadership development in DC and beyond. This week, School Leader Lab provided the testimony below to the DC Council regarding educator retention, and we're eager to share our perspective with you.
While discussions often center on classroom teachers - who are absolutely essential - we emphasize a critical point: school leaders shape the entire building's culture and significantly influence whether teachers stay and students grow. School leaders are also instrumental in executing any city-wide retention initiatives. This reality reinforces why we consistently advocate for comprehensive leadership development - strong school leaders create environments where both teachers and students flourish.
We're also proud to highlight several alumni and school partners who contributed powerful testimony at the Council hearing:
Shendrina Walker (School Leader Cohort 2020) shared how development and support, including her time in School Leader Lab, has been instrumental in her leadership journey.
Daniela Anello, Executive Director of DC Bilingual (a recent Blue Ribbon award recipient), highlighted how investing in staff development drives their school's success. SLL has supported multiple DCB leaders since our inception, including co-principals Eleni McCabe (TFA DC PLC 2024) and Ina Borjas (School Leader Cohort 2023).
Carlie Fisherow, Executive Director of Washington Yu Ying, spoke about her efforts to invest in staff growth and how it is imperative to Yu Ying’s success. Shout out to Yu Ying for their impressive 91% employee retention rate last year. We’re proud to support three Yu Ying leaders this year, including principal Amy Quinn (Executive Leader Cohort 2024).
Justin Lessek, Executive Director of Sojourner Truth PCS, advocated for flexible spending for professional development. Denise Edwards, principal of SJS, is an alum of SLC 2020 and currently participating in our DC PLC.
We remain deeply committed to supporting and developing effective school leaders, and we're grateful to have partners who are relentlessly focused on investing in their people so our children feel the benefits.
Here is my testimony to the DC Council:
Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee. My name is Erica Beal, and I am the Executive Director of School Leader Lab, a DC-based nonprofit that develops transformational school leaders who create schools where teachers want to work and students thrive.
I want to begin by celebrating meaningful progress in DC's leadership landscape. According to OSSE's 2024 Educator Workforce Report, principal retention has improved from 74% to 78% - approaching the Harvard Business Review's benchmark of 80-85% for healthy turnover. Even more encouraging, the percentage of school leaders with more than five years of experience has nearly doubled - from 33% in 2021-22 to 53% in 2023-24 (OSSE, 2024). The city has made a lot of investments in leadership retention and development and it is making a difference.
However, as someone who works with school leaders every day, I can tell you we're not out of the woods yet. Not even close. That 78% retention rate means 22% of our schools - more than one in five - are experiencing a new leader this year. In our charter sector, 29% of those new leaders have no previous leadership experience (OSSE, 2024). Just last week, I was connecting with a school leader who was desperately trying to find ways to "make it to June." She is not an outlier. If leaders are struggling and considering leaving in October, this affects teacher satisfaction, development, retention, and student performance. After all, people don’t leave bad jobs. They leave bad managers.
The stakes could not be higher. Whenever a school loses an effective leader, it triggers a cascade of adverse effects that can take years to overcome. Research shows that brand-new principals have a detrimental impact on student achievement compared to experienced principals (OSSE DC Educator Workforce Report). During listening sessions with the DC Policy Center, teachers emphasized that "frequent changes in school leadership disrupted the continuity of the school's vision and mission."
The Impact of School Leadership
Research from the Wallace Foundation shows that leadership is second only to classroom instruction in factors affecting student learning. Consider the scale of this impact:
Principals influence all of the students in their building; 428 in the average elementary school compared with 25 students in the average teacher’s classroom
Replacing a below-average principal with an above-average principal leads to:
2.9 additional months of math learning gains per year.
2.7 additional months of reading learning gains per year.
A greater impact on student performance than 66% of math interventions and 50% of reading interventions.
The Cost of Leadership Turnover
The private sector understands that great leaders aren't born - they're developed. Yet in education, we often promote strong teachers into leadership positions without providing the distinct skillset required for these complex roles. As noted by the RAND Corporation, "In other sectors, people realize that just because you're a good doer, that doesn't mean you'll be a good manager of the doers. It's a different skill set. But in the education field, they haven't really gotten to that."
This lack of preparation has dire consequences for teacher retention. According to an 2022-2023 OSSE DC Educator Workforce Report, of effective teachers who plan to leave teaching, more than half (58%) said their top reason involved working conditions related to either school culture or leadership. The number one reason was dissatisfaction with school leadership/immediate supervisor.
When we fail to support our leaders, the impacts cascade throughout the entire system:
Each principal turnover costs approximately $75,000 (RAND study).
Schools experience declining test scores for up to three years following a principal transition (Henry & Harbatkin, 2019).
Nearly 10% of schools lose multiple leaders within three years, rising to 12% in our highest-poverty schools (Henry & Harbatkin, 2019).
Consider this powerful story from a Ward 8 parent: "In middle school, my son had the same school leader for four years, and I saw him flourish. He built trust with the adults. The teachers were there throughout as well. When he got to high school, it was completely different. He had two principals in one year. The school really suffered."
The Leadership Crisis
Our current school leaders face unprecedented challenges:
85% of principals report frequent job-related stress compared to 35% of U.S. working adults (Wallace Foundation, 2023).
The percentage of principals who say "stress and disappointments of the job are worth it" has plummeted from 85% to 60% since 2018 (Wallace Foundation, 2023).
What's Possible with Strong Leadership
As TNTP's Opportunity Myth research demonstrates, in high-performing schools, leaders consistently:
Hold their entire school accountable for giving students work worthy of their beautiful minds.
Create school cultures that demand high-quality academic experiences for every student.
Support teachers in delivering instruction that asks students to think deeply.
Ensure all students, especially those behind grade level, have access to challenging instruction.
The Solution: Comprehensive Leadership Development
Despite their crucial role, school leaders typically have limited high-quality professional development opportunities before and after placement. Most receive only "one-shot" conferences and workshops rather than sustained development with coaching and practice. School Leader Lab has been working on the challenges of ensuring a talented pipeline of education leaders for DC schools since our founding in 2017. Our reach to date:
Over 500 DC district and charter leaders
More than 120 DC schools and more than half of the DC LEAs
Partnerships with both district and charter leaders
82% of our leaders identify as people of color
80% work in Title I schools
Our approach includes proven retention practices:
Using our pipeline framework to help organizations get clear about the development necessary at every stage of the pipeline
Cohort-based learning communities focused on rigorous instruction, antiracism, and people leadership
One-on-one coaching
School visits to see high-quality instruction in action
Support for leaders at every level, from teacher leaders to chiefs
And it’s having an impact:
Retention rate among DC leaders we’ve worked with is 89% compared to the DC average retention rate of 78%
90% of our alumni cite their experience with School Leader Lab as influencing their capacity and desire to stay in their role for the next three years
85% of direct reports and 92% of supervisors report growth in leaders who are in our programs.
Recommendations
This isn’t about selling more work for School Leader Lab. What it is about is seeing that when we talk about retention, we often focus on teachers. What we fail to see is that leaders are the ones who create the working conditions that either retain or drive out those teachers. Leaders are the ones who must drive any initiative we put in place. We have to develop and retain those leaders for any change to take hold. Whether it’s with or without School Leader Lab, I want to ensure that every DC student has access to transformative leadership. I urge the Council to:
Increase funding for comprehensive leadership development programs with proven success.
Support programs and initiatives that help define clear leadership pathways starting at the teacher-leader level and what it takes to be successful at every level/layer of the pipeline.
Ensure equitable access to leadership development, particularly for leaders of color.
Invest in cohort programs in particular. These are proven to help leaders manage stress, grow skills, gain a peer network and build crucial practices to drive student growth.
Approaching benchmark retention rates is just the beginning. The challenge before us is not just about achieving basic stability (which we still have ways to go to achieve)– it's about creating the conditions for our leaders to truly excel. Our students deserve not just surviving leaders, but thriving ones who can create exceptional school environments. We need leaders who can disrupt the racist practice of giving students work below their capabilities and who can retain effective teachers who drive academic success. The path to excellent education for every DC student runs through developing exceptional leaders who create conditions for both teachers and students to thrive. Thank you for your time and attention to this critical issue.
