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At the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, we read with sympathy Michael Winerip's column on Monday about the grassroots protest across the state by principals who are supposedly being trained in how to do performance evaluations of teachers and other administrators. As Mr. Winerip pointed out, of the 658 New York State principals who had signed a letter protesting the evaluation system, 18 were from New York City schools. In New York City, the so-called training by the state has yet to begin for a majority of our 1,700 principals and 3,000 assistant principals.

School principals throughout the state are in revolt against the State Department of Education for imposing a system that is supposed to guarantee reliable testing for students. The leaders of the principals' rebellion charge that the system doesn't actually accomplish that. Instead, it degrades the educators in our schools. One principal, Bernard Kaplan, of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, told me: "It's stupid. It makes no sense."

Most teachers have long known that they affect the life chances of children. But it took the work of economists to convince the world of public policy to take seriously what is now known as "teacher effectiveness." Now one of those very same economists has turned to another subject that, to most teachers and principals, is similarly self-evident: principals, like teachers, affect the life chances of children, too. Last week, Stanford's Eric Hanushek -- who conducted many of the early economic analyses on teacher impact -- presented a new research paper at a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research. The findings show, in his words, that "principals matter."

"This was written by Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos. Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York.  Leonadartos is the principal of Clarkstown High School North in Rockland County, New York. Carol is the co-author and Harry is an active supporter of the New York principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores."

Principals these days are expected to be a little bit of many different things: manager, educator, financial whiz, social worker, enforcer, data analyst, cheerleader and contortionist (figuratively, at least). They are the people with whom the buck stops. Fernanda Santos, who covers city schools for The Times, is tagging along with a city school Principal all day. Follow along as she reports on her day with Musa Ali Shama, Principal of the large and enduring Francis Lewis High School.

The Center for Public Education, a project of the National School Boards Association, released a report today that serves as a comprehensive compilation of studies into principal effectiveness. Called The principal Perspective, the report repeats the assertion made by some researchers that principals are second only to teachers in their impact on student achievement.

Recent studies have examined the relationship between principals and student outcomes, and attempted to identify what characteristics and qualifications are needed to be an effective principal, whether that's providing staff with the resources and support they need, hiring and retaining the best talent, setting expectations for instruction, or simply gaining more experience. So what has the research found out? Let's take a look.

Days after a Brooklyn principal wrote a widely publicized letter of protest about the quality of this year's new state standardized exams, another principal has written to John B. King Jr., New York's education commissioner, to complain about the tests. This time the letter comes from Sharon Emick Fougner, principal of Elizabeth Mellick Baker Elementary School in Great Neck, Long Island, who urged the commissioner to conduct a review of the math exam that was given to fourth to eighth graders last month.

This article takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union signed a new collective bargaining agreement that gave principals the flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers for any reason and without the documentation and hearing process that is typically required for such dismissals. With the cooperation of the CPS, I matched information on all teachers who were eligible for dismissal with records indicating which teachers were dismissed. With these data, I estimate the relative weight that school administrators place on a variety of teacher characteristics. I find evidence that principals do consider teacher absences and value-added measures, along with several demographic characteristics, in determining which teachers to dismiss.

This paper takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining agreement that gave principals the flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers for any reason and without the documentation and hearing process that is typically required for such dismissals. With the cooperation of the CPS, I matched information on all teachers that were eligible for dismissal with records indicating which teachers were dismissed. With this data, I estimate the relative weight that school administrators place on a variety of teacher characteristics. I find evidence that principals do consider teacher absences and value-added measures, along with several demographic characteristics, in determining which teachers to dismiss.

About 20 percent of principals new to a school leave that posting within one or two years, leaving behind a school that generally continues on a downward academic slide after their departure, according to a study released last week by the RAND Corp. on behalf of New York City-based New Leaders. "The underlying idea is that churn is not good," said Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, an author of the report and the executive director of research and policy development for New Leaders, formerly known as New Leaders for New Schools. The nonprofit group recruits and trains principals to work in urban districts. However, the answer is not as simple as just allowing or encouraging those principals to remain in place, she said. "In some cases, the solution is to give folks more time," Ms. Ikemoto said, but policymakers should make sure they're selecting the very best candidates for those positions from the start.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard offered up more details Monday about their plans to hold principals to strict performance standards, award principals bonuses and work to create better principal preparation programs.

"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's school reform proposals have infuriated educators across the state. Award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School is one of them and in this post, she  explains why. Burris, who has written frequently for this blog,  was named New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, was tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing the botched school reform program in New York for years on this blog. Her most recent post was "Principal: 'There comes a time when rules must be broken…That time is now.'" (In this post, Burris refers to "value-added" scores, which refer to value-added measurement (VAM), which purports to be able to determine the "value" a teacher brings to student learning by plopping test scores into complicated formulas that can supposedly strip out all other factors, including the conditions in which a student lives.)"

This is an open letter that a group of New York principals sent this week to the New York State Board of Regents about school reform and the standardized testing regime. More than 1,400 New York State principals have signed a petition asking state education officials to rethink their reform agenda. You can read about that effort at www.newyorkprincipals.org and @nyprincipals on Twitter.

Clarkstown North High School Principal Harry Leonardatos said his colleagues across the state are working together to show their opposition to the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), which is already in place in some school districts.  He expects about 100 New York State Principals, maybe more, to attend this afternoon's photo shoot, which kicks off their publicity campaign to inform state legislators and the public about the shortcomings of the APPR evaluation program.

City principals should overcome their fear and join with more than a thousand of their colleagues from across the state who oppose New York's teacher evaluation rules, Diane Ravitch urged during a speech to the principals union Tuesday.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan Monday to award merit pay to Chicago Public Schools principals who perform well on a new set of evaluative metrics as critics questioned whether the program will lead to gains in student achievement. The performance rewards-which may be based on student test scores, school climate and leadership skills, among other factors - are part of an overhaul of principal preparation and evaluation at CPS. They will be paid for over the next four years by a new $5 million fund created through charitable donations, Emanuel said. The district plans to implement a similar incentive program for teachers, he said.

Buckle your seat belts and hold on for your life. Teachers and principals, welcome to APPR Airlines flight 2011. Your journey on the 'plane to be built in the air' just took off from New York's Albany airport. This description of the New York teacher and principal evaluation system known as APPR is not my critique of an incomplete and untested evaluation system. Rather, it is the description provided by the state Education Department itself. Across New York State, all of the school and district leaders who evaluate teachers are being pulled out of their schools for mandated, taxpayer-funded training in this APPR teacher and principal evaluation system.

in opposition to the idea of tying the evaluation of teachers and principals to student test scores.  In 2010 the NY State Legislature modified the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) of teachers and principals in an effort to gain Race to the Top Funds from the US Department of Education.

Carol Burris, the principal of a Long Island high school, isn't done fighting. Even after her statewide principals petition failed to sway lawmakers from passing a teacher evaluation bill last month, she's hoping her newest effort - a poll - will do the trick. Beginning today, Burris is sending out surveys to principals, teachers, and parents about New York State's high-stakes testing policy "to give voice to the concerns that we are hearing from all three groups," she said. "We have no intention of not continuing our fight."