Researchers have turned attention toward principal turnover and its impact, especially in hard-to-staff schools. For example, the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Learning Policy Institute recently issued a report indicating that nearly one in five principals leave their position every year (Levin, Bradley, & Scott, 2019). To inform the issue with the perspective of practicing principals, the Principal Leadership Institutes at UC Berkeley and UCLA, with support from the Stuart Foundation, launched a state-wide initiative entitled the Change Maker project, to support the well-being and improve retention of alumni principals. Change Makers includes a small cohort-based model of professional learning that focuses on reflection, networking, and content related to understanding well-being. Then in June 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project developed a first-of-its-kind survey focused on what erodes and supports the resilience of school leaders. Items and questions were informed by the content from the first year and a half of the project.
With nearly 200 responses, survey results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified stressors and increased overall stress levels for principals across demographic groups. Interestingly, principals employed in their current district for three to five years reported significantly higher changes in stress compared to those who were employed for one to two years in their current district. Leaders of color and multilingual leaders reported higher levels of stress before and during the pandemic compared to their White and monolingual counterparts. When seeking support, principals turn to peers and colleagues, mentors, and friends more frequently than supervisors and other options. Length of tenure appears to correlate with higher feelings of connectedness to school site/district as well as higher levels of feelings of efficacy. However, responses suggest that high school–level principals with enrollments of 1000 and higher experience feelings of lower self-efficacy. The Principal Resilience Survey suggests that the experience of stress and burnout, as well as effective support strategies, are areas where critical investigation is needed in order to address the broader issues of leader attrition and retention.