Where is leadership stretched at your school?

Schools are good at developing teachers and bad at developing the people who lead them. For teachers, the evidence is strong: a review of 60 causal studies found coaching lifted instruction by nearly half a standard deviation. I think the adults you promote into leadership deserve the same, and leaving them to work it out alone is a design choice.

Culture in a school is set by the adults, and new teachers feel it first. In NAIS's survey of 704 teachers at 304 independent schools, only 58 percent said the hiring process gave them realistic expectations of the job. When the real rules are learned in the faculty room, that's a design problem.

Initiatives rarely fail on the idea. About one in ten NAIS schools changed heads in 2025, and NAIS cites research that it takes a leader around five years to make lasting change. An initiative that lives in one person leaves with them, so build it into the school, not the person.

A new seat in a school comes with a calendar that doesn't wait. NAIS reports that about one in five new heads leaves within three years. The first year sets the pattern, so it's worth designing on purpose rather than surviving.