Research and Policy Report

All the Voices: Statewide Collaborations for School Leadership Under ESSA

Brenda J. Turnbull, Daniel K. Aladjem, Kathleen Fletcher, and Sophie Kidd
September 2022 | Policy Studies Associates, Inc. and Wallace Foundation

This report from the Wallace Foundation and Policy Studies Associates describes the accomplishments and lessons learned from the work of the ESSA Leadership Learning Community (ELLC) from 2016 through 2021. The ELLC, supported by the Wallace Foundation, was a collaborative network of school district, state, and agency leaders who partnered to work on the challenges schools face. The ELLC responded to the opportunity for state and local decision-making that opened through the reauthorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, and between 2016 and 2022, ELLC participants on 11 state teams were able to influence state policy design, program improvement, and program creation. With a focus on equity-minded school leadership, ELLC’s outputs included guides for equity-oriented school leadership, learning modules for principal preparation programs, and an institute for principal professional learning.