Where principals have been there 10+ years — and the climate it builds
The question
Do New York City schools with long-tenured principals have higher teacher trust and more stable outcomes?
We can't directly answer this — principal-tenure data isn't in our database (same gap as the principal-turnover story). The city Department of Education used to publish principal name and tenure in the School Quality Snapshot; that field was discontinued in 2023-24. Once a tenure dataset is built (via a Freedom of Information Law request or the Wayback Machine), the analysis is straightforward: compare schools whose principal has 10 or more years of tenure with shorter-tenure peers on teacher trust and outcome stability. Published research (Jason Grissom at Vanderbilt) suggests stable principal leadership corresponds to lower teacher turnover and modest outcome gains, but only after about three years.
Data analysis
Investigation run 2026-05-31.
TL;DR
We can't directly answer this — no principal-tenure data in our database (same gap as the principal-turnover story). The city Department of Education used to publish principal name and tenure in the School Quality Snapshot; that field was discontinued in 2023-24. Doing this story requires scraping Wayback Machine snapshots of the city's school-finder page or filing a Freedom of Information Law request for the principal-change log. Once available, the analysis compares schools whose principal has 10 or more years of tenure with shorter-tenure peers on teacher trust and outcome stability.
What we'd expect to find
Per Jason Grissom's research at Vanderbilt, principals take 3 to 5 years to show their full effect. Long-tenured principals correspond to lower teacher turnover, higher teacher trust, more stable enrollment, and modest outcome gains (roughly 0.05 to 0.10 standard deviations). Schools that go through several short-tenure principals in succession tend to stagnate.
What we can do without principal data
Use outcome stability as a proxy for leadership stability. For each school, compute the year-over-year variation in outcomes across five measures. Schools with low variation likely have stable leadership; schools with high variation likely have leadership churn. Correlate low-variation schools with teacher trust scores. It's a noisy proxy but feasible.
What's next
Get the principal-tenure data via a Freedom of Information Law request or by scraping. Then this story and the principal-turnover story both become doable.
Methodology & replication recipe — the data sources, queries, and steps behind this analysis.
More on specific schools
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- The Brooklyn New School lost 52 points of math proficiency in six years
- Bronx Aerospace High School cut chronic absenteeism by 34 points. How?
- The Anderson School scores at the ceiling — and proves nothing
- Two MS within a half-mile: one screens, one zones. Same neighborhood, different futures.