The George W. Bush Institute Case Study
Challenge
Determine the impact of the School Leadership Initiative (SLI) on principals’ perceptions of several key variables of interest to the GWBI.
Solution
Clean and organize data collected by the GWBI from school districts and survey participants, combine with publicly available data, and perform a variety of statistical analyses to answer poignant research questions posed by the GWBI.
Impact
Retention of leadership talent and facilitation of their best performance strengthens educational opportunities for district children. The data collected by the GWBI is now supporting future efforts like the SLI.
Methodology
Research Analytics Consulting, LLC (RAC) embarked upon a pilot study to determine the impact of the George W. Bush Institute’s (GWBI) School Leadership Initiative (SLI) on principals’ perceptions of several key variables of interest to the GWBI. We constructed four variables based on an Exploratory Factor Analysis, and quantified the improvement in these variables associated with participation in the SLI. Then we identified the impact of each of these variables on school principal retention within the Fort Worth district.
Based on the results of the pilot study, RAC was contracted to conduct an expanded study using eight additional variables hypothesized to be impacted by the SLI, while focusing on three school districts that participated in the GWBI SLI from 2018 through 2021. We conducted reliability analysis, factor analysis and multilevel modeling.
Results
In the pilot study, four variables were uncovered fitting a factor analysis model to the SLI Principal Survey. There was some level of disagreement found on four of the 12 identical survey items that were administered to both district level personnel and principals. In most cases, district level personnel perceived district-level practices more positively than principals perceived. Approximately 12% of the variability in STARR Reading Achievement scores, for 2019 fifth grade students in the Fort Worth School District was explained by Job Satisfaction and School Climate. Fitting the same model, across all grade levels, yielded comparable results and explained 15% of the variability in STARR Reading Test Scores.
In the broader subsequent analysis, principal scores tended to increase over time, which implies that principals’ perceptions about their jobs and district level processes and procedures improved over time, as the GWBI SLI project matured. Job Satisfaction, School Climate, Compensation and Incentives, Working Environment, Job Embeddedness, and School Culture were found to be statistically significant as predictors of principal attrition.
Testing for a mediating relationship suggested that if principals feel more embedded in their jobs then they are more likely to stay in the district, even if they are not that satisfied with their compensation and incentives, as measured by level of perceived competitiveness of pay and non-monetary compensation for principals within the district.
Tools Used:
Python for data extraction, cleaning and pre-processing; R for statistical analysis (tidyverse, knitr, dplyr, psych, caret, mlbench).
