Specific schoolsFull briefing
When the principal leaves, scores fall — but not always
The longer form of the briefing for this story: the original thesis, the supporting findings the data team flagged, and the reporting directions a journalist could follow. For the short version and the data analysis, see the main story page.
Thesis
School outcomes typically dip in the year after a principal change. Some schools recover; some don't. With NYC's recent leadership shifts, can we identify which schools survived a principal change with momentum intact and which lost ground?
Supporting findings
- Need: principal-name + tenure data per school. Available in NYC DOE 'School Quality Snapshots' or scraping schoolsearch.schools.nyc.
- Build a 'principal change event' table: school × year-of-change.
- Test: average outcome change in year-1 post-change vs year-0 (the year before).
- Test: 3-year-cumulative impact of principal change.
- Cross-reference with NYC DOE Quality Reviews — schools with low Quality Reviews often see principal change soon after.
- Stable schools (no principal change in 5+ years) — are they more likely to maintain outcomes?
- Compare with leadership-stability research from MA, TN, NYC (Jason Grissom at Vanderbilt).
- Some schools survive multiple principal changes well; others collapse with one. What predicts resilience? Strong AP or coaching team?
- Look at charter networks vs DOE — charter networks tend to have higher principal turnover but lower outcome volatility (centralized model).
- Story: 'When [Principal X] left [School Y], the test scores didn't.'
Reporting directions
- Scrape NYC DOE 'Find a School' for principal names per school over time (Wayback Machine for history).
- Build the principal-change event table.
- Profile 3 schools where principal change was followed by outcome dip + recovery.
- Interview Jason Grissom on principal-effect research.