A Word from the Evaluators Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner
 
A formidable challenge evaluators face in answering questions about the worth of educational initiatives involves the urgency to develop clear causal pathways that link the initiatives to gains in student academic and social achievement. Evaluators and researchers struggle with this pressure because effects in something as complex as student achievement can rarely, if ever, be directly linked to a single input. Our challenge as the evaluators of NSLN is to understand how NSLN contributes to these important outcomes.   
  
Our effort to develop a systematic framework of evaluation brought us to new research being done by the Leadership Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University as part of the ongoing work of The Wallace Foundation's focus on school leadership[1]. The question driving the research is to develop an understanding of the pathways between an individual leader's capacities and the influence that individual has on improving instruction and subsequent school success.
 
The central premise of what they are calling the Val-Ed model is that the capacity of school leaders to impact student success is linked to a principal's capacity to deploy leadership behaviors, which include leader's knowledge and skills, personal characteristics, and values and beliefs - for these shape the culture of learning in a school. How leaders deploy these leadership behaviors impacts their effectiveness on core competencies of school leadership such as:
1) the extent to which leadership ensures that there are individual, team and school goals for rigorous academic and social learning
2) the extent to which effective school leaders work with teachers to ensure that ambitious academic content is provided to all students in core academic subjects
3) that effective school leaders understand the properties of quality instruction and provide feedback and support to teachers around instructional issues.
 
As evaluators, we have worked with this conceptual framework in developing a systematic process of understanding the impact of NSLN.  The NSLN theory of change contends that as a result of participation in the NSLN experience, principals develop their leadership capacities and then deploy them in service of the core dimensions (such as working with teachers on quality instruction or working with the school community to ensure that there is a rigorous curriculum). As the researchers from Vanderbilt surmise, "These leadership behaviors then lead to school performance on core components such as providing a rigorous curriculum and high-quality instruction. These school performances, in turn, lead to student success."
 
NSLN programming focuses on developing these crucial leadership behaviors. It is a professional development approach, which strengthens individual principals by providing collegial opportunities to identify, reflect and work on capacities the research literature identifies as crucial to successful leadership.

[1] See Goldring, E., Porter, A., Murphy, J., Elliot N., S., & Cravens, X. (2007). Assessing learning-centered leadership: Connections to research, professional standards, and current practices. Vanderbilt University: The Wallace Foundation.  Also see, The Wallace Foundation website and its current area of focus on education leadership http://www.wallacefoundation.org