Principal and District Support

Our Principal Rubric and Leadership Series empower principals to advance instructional excellence and equity. Superintendents and district leaders can work alongside NIET to receive coaching and consulting that will help them to advance their schools to the next level.

The Principal Rubric is the most comprehensive tool for leader development I have encountered. It allows me to focus on the areas that will impact our school success in the most effective ways.

Michele M. Smith, Pierceton Elementary School Principal, Whitko, IN

NIET believes effective leaders must establish, communicate, and activate a compelling vision of excellence; prioritize and create instructional coherence; develop high expectations and equitable opportunities; build the capacity of others; and model integrity and build trust.

To support principal growth and development, NIET has developed a Principal Standards Rubric and Principal Leadership Series. These services are designed to build essential mindsets and skills that help principals elevate their practice and create a culture to advance instructional practice and improve outcomes for all students.

Additionally, NIET works alongside superintendents and district teams to build instructional leadership and identify high-impact action steps that will systemically improve instruction. The support is grounded in the NIET District Instructional Framework, which is aligned to NIET's Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric and Principal Standards Rubric.

The Principal Standards Rubric defines excellence in school leadership represented in six domains:

School mission, vision, and strategic goal setting
Instructional leadership
Capacity building
School environment/community and campus climate
Ethics and integrity
School operations/management

The domains and their research-based performance indicators serve as a tool for leadership coaching, support, and evaluation. Principals will gain access to complementary support in the EE PASS portal, including online resources, videos, training modules, and evaluator certification.

Additionally, principals will receive an opportunity to attend a 2-day rubric training to obtain an understanding of the rubric as a tool to support principal growth as well as learn the evaluation and observation process.

For more information, download the Principal Standards Rubric Flyer.

Read reflections from leaders who participated in the NIET Principal Standards Rubric pilot.

The Principal Leadership Series supports school leaders in growing their capacity to serve all students. The multiday training series focuses on three critical areas:

Creating and Communicating a Culture of Equity (2 days)
- Defining educational equity and identifying practices to promote equitable access
- Determining the equity mindsets needed to address issues of inequity
- Examining current context around school culture and equitable practices
Building Shared Instructional Leadership (4 days)
- Knowing the elements of the instructional core and the connections between each component
- Creating and utilizing a leadership team structure that builds leader capacity to recognize instructional rigor, support teacher effectiveness, and make decisions that lead to student success
- Implementing leadership team structures that are driven by student and teacher data to inform action steps, and understanding their role as lead learner
Sustaining Reflective Practice through Continuous Improvement and Coaching (2 days)
- Being able to plan the implementation of intentional leadership structures to incorporate reflective practices both individually and collaboratively
- Understanding how coaching grounded in student data can deepen the reflective process and impact student achievement
- Being able to implement strengths-based coaching grounded in student evidence to strengthen a school culture.

Download the NIET Principal Leadership Series Flyer.

When superintendents and district administrators are equipped to be instructional leaders and receive coaching that helps them develop their skills, they can advance their schools to the next level and drive districtwide improvement. NIET works with superintendents and district teams to build out an action plan rooted in contextual analysis and strengths, with the option for continuing guidance and coaching.

This service includes:

Contextual analysis
On-site support (root-cause analysis and action planning)
Continuing guidance

The support is based on the NIET District Instructional Framework, which is aligned to NIET's Teaching and Principal Standards Rubrics with a focus on high-quality leadership practices and principles.

For more information, download the District Instructional Leadership Flyer.

NIET provides consulting in other areas, which include: