“If we prioritize things like teacher retention; if we prioritize things like school culture and climate as much as student achievement,” says Richard Gonzales, “everyone focuses their time, money, effort, energy toward those things.”

As 2017 nears its close, work on the University Principal Preparation Initiative — an initiative led at UConn by the Neag School’s University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) — is getting ready to celebrate its first birthday. This past year, UConn was one of seven universities selected to take part in the Wallace Foundation-funded initiative, which launched officially in January and is focused on improving training programs for aspiring school principals nationwide. Over the past 10 months, dedicated workgroups have been developing a “theory of action” for redesigning UCAPP.