Evaluating principals and administrators

Principals and assistant principals are usually the people running everyone else evaluations, and are often the last to have a coherent rubric of their own.

Instructional leadership, school culture, operations, family and community engagement, and the quality of the evaluation and feedback they give their own staff.

What we provide

A leadership rubric written for this role, in both the 2013 and 2022 editions. It runs on the same evaluation calendar and in the same system as your teaching staff, so administrators are evaluated in the tool they use to evaluate everyone else.

• Components cover instructional leadership rather than classroom delivery
• The quality of feedback given to staff is itself part of the evaluation
• School culture and community engagement are recorded as evidence
• Administrators are evaluated in the same system they use for teachers

This is a leadership rubric rather than a Danielson instrument. Principals are evaluated against leadership standards, not the Framework for Teaching, and the rubric is written accordingly. Both editions are our own work.

The 2022 rubric at a glance

26 components across 6 domains, written for this role rather than borrowed from the classroom teacher rubric.

Vision

• 1a Embracing the Vision
• 1b Communicating the Vision
• 1c Implementing the Vision
• 1d Monitoring and Evaluating the Vision

Teaching and Learning

• 2a Maintaining Focus on Teaching and Learning
• 2b Developing a Culture of Divergent Thinking
• 2c Ensuring an Inclusive Culture for Learning
• 2d Monitoring Student Learning
• 2e Evaluating Teaching
• 2f Driving Student Achievement

Management

• 3a Making Management Decisions to Support Teaching and Learning
• 3b Developing Procedures to Support Teaching and Learning
• 3c Allocating Resources to Support Teaching and Learning
• 3d Creating a Safe and Welcoming Environment

Community

• 4a Understanding Community Needs
• 4b Involving Community Members
• 4c Providing Mutual Service Opportunities
• 4d Understanding and Valuing Diversity

Ethics

• 5a Demonstrating a Personal and Professional Code of Ethics
• 5b Leading by Learning
• 5c Respecting Rights and Dignity of All
• 5d Demonstrating Resilience

Strategic Leadership

• 6a Operating on Behalf of Students and Families
• 6b Strategizing Collaboratively for Student Learning
• 6c Working Within Policies, Laws, and Regulations
• 6d Communicating with External Decision-Makers

Each component carries level-of-performance descriptors in all four levels, written in first, second and third person so self-assessments and evaluations read correctly from the same source. Ask us for the full rubric and we will walk you through it.

More than the rubric

Evidence can come from instructional leadership work, including the quality of the feedback they give their own staff. The rubric is not a document you print and fill in. It is built into software that runs the whole cycle: observations scheduled and recorded, rubric language inserted into the evaluation for you, self assessments and professional development plans running against the same rubric, and district reporting at the end of the year.

Plenty of districts already have the right rubric sitting in a filing cabinet. The work is in running the cycle with it. See how the software works → See the other 13 roles

Evaluating administrators this year?

Tell us how your principals are evaluated today, and we will show you the administrator rubric, including how the feedback they give their own staff is assessed. If we are not the right fit for your district, we will tell you that too. Talk with us about administrator evaluation →