The Effective Schools Framework focuses on describing schools where substantial student success and social justice are the norm. By articulating specific practices that lead to improvement, the framework supports any leader, irrespective of prior experience or individual strengths or challenges, to move forward. This growth is accelerated when the framework is used in concert with district expectations and leadership competency guidelines. The alignment helps clarify what the leader needs to do to effectively lead their school community to embrace effective and sustainable practices.

The framework illustrates how school practices–and student outcomes–can be improved through persistent and integrated attention to five priority areas (referred to as domains). Within each domain are research-based descriptions of school practice at various levels.

The framework is based on data from two decades of principal effectiveness research by the Wallace Foundation, including projects in 24 states and numerous school districts and nearly 100 reports and publications. The research identifies correlations between particular types of leadership practice and student achievement, which were used to determine the five domains of the Effective Schools Framework.