Tennessee study: 53% of licensed educators aren't in play for school leadership

A new [EdWorkingPaper] is arguing that Tennessee districts may be overestimating their principal bench by a wide margin. In “An Untappable Pipeline? Examining Why Many Educators with Administrative Licenses Do Not Pursue School Leadership,” Francisco Arturo Santelli and Jason A. Grissom use statewide administrative and survey data to sort licensed educators who are not already in leadership jobs into an “available” group and an “unavailable” group. Their headline finding: 53 percent of seemingly eligible candidates are currently unavailable because they are not pursuing, and do not intend to pursue, school leadership roles. (edworkingpapers.com)

That matters because Tennessee’s licensure system makes the administrative license an obvious first proxy for who could become a principal or assistant principal. The state says its Instructional Leader License allows an educator to serve as a principal, assistant principal, or instructional supervisor. But a November 11, 2025 brief from the Tennessee Education Research Alliance had already suggested the bench was thinner than licensure counts imply: only about 26 percent of teachers with an administrative license said they were actively pursuing a leadership role. (tn.gov)

The new paper pushes that point further, and with a useful nuance for district HR teams. Its “available” pool is not limited to people applying for jobs right now; it also includes educators who say they intend to pursue leadership. In other words, the 53 percent figure should not be read as “only 47 percent are ready to interview tomorrow.” It is a claim about effective labor supply: how many licensed educators are actually in play at all, not just how many meet formal requirements on paper. (edworkingpapers.com)

The paper reframes the problem as interest, not just credentials

The most important contribution of the study is that it treats aspiration as part of the pipeline, not as an afterthought. Santelli and Grissom find that the unavailable pool is older and more experienced than the available pool, and that many of those educators once did aspire to school leadership before losing interest. In their analysis of open-ended responses, the most common reasons educators gave for opting out were stress and unrealistic expectations of the role, conflicts with family obligations, insufficient compensation, and too few open positions. (edworkingpapers.com)

That shifts the practical lesson for districts. If the constraint were mainly technical — not enough people with the right degree, license, or test score — the obvious response would be to expand preparation and credentialing. This paper suggests a different bottleneck: many educators who have already done the formal work to become eligible have decided the job is not worth pursuing. That is less a preparation problem than a job-design and labor-market problem. The paper itself says improving pay and working conditions may be necessary to expand the effective supply of school leaders. (edworkingpapers.com)

The broader research base makes that conclusion harder to dismiss as a Tennessee quirk. The AEFP Live Handbook notes that school leadership labor markets are highly local and that most principals are effectively “homegrown,” which means districts often depend on internal or nearby candidates rather than a broad national search. It also notes that the first administrative job is typically an assistant principal role and that pipeline programs can improve principal selection and raise student achievement. That combination matters: when local systems lose would-be leaders before they ever apply, they are not just missing a few candidates in one hiring season. They may be shrinking the apprentice pool from which future principals usually emerge. (livehandbook.org)

That local dependence is especially significant because principal turnover is not rare. A 2024 EdWorkingPaper using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City found that the typical principal leads a school for only 3 to 5 years and leaves the principalship after 6 to 7 years. Districts therefore need a steady stream of plausible successors, not just a long list of credentialed names. (edworkingpapers.com)

What readers should — and should not — change after reading it

School and district leaders should treat the paper as strong but preliminary evidence. EdWorkingPapers says its papers are circulated for comment and discussion before publication and have not gone through rigorous peer review. The findings are also Tennessee-specific. That said, Tennessee is not unusual in relying on licensure as a gatekeeping device; the AEFP handbook says most states require several years of experience, an advanced degree, and a licensure assessment for school leaders. So the exact 53 percent figure should not be exported wholesale to other states, but the paper’s core warning — that formal eligibility can badly overstate real availability — is likely relevant well beyond Tennessee. (edworkingpapers.com)

A sensible response is not to throw out licensure data, but to stop treating it as a succession plan. In practice, districts would get a more realistic pipeline audit by asking at least four questions that licensure files cannot answer: Who actually wants the job? Who could take it given family and geographic constraints? Who sees the pay bump as worth the workload? And who once wanted leadership but has cooled on it? Those questions are an inference from the paper’s design and findings, but they follow directly from the study’s distinction between eligibility and availability. (edworkingpapers.com)

The earlier Tennessee survey brief also hints that a better audit should be disaggregated, not generic. It found that male teachers, teachers of color, and teachers in urban districts and high schools were more likely than others to report pursuing leadership roles. That does not tell districts whom they should recruit, but it does suggest that a statewide or districtwide bench can look healthier than the likely pool for a particular school type, geography, or leadership opening. For a rural district, or for an elementary opening, the practical pool may be narrower than a statewide licensure count suggests. (tnedresearch.org)

Pipeline-building may need to start with the job itself

There is a second-order implication here for states and leadership-prep programs. Existing evidence says structured principal pipelines can help districts identify and support stronger leaders, and Tennessee’s own licensure structure creates a formal path into administration. But if stress, family mismatch, compensation concerns, and scarce openings are what keep licensed educators from moving, then more coursework or more licensure slots alone will not solve the problem. Districts may need to make assistant principal and principal roles more sustainable — clearer expectations, better supports, and compensation that reflects the job — if they want trained educators to stay interested long enough to apply. That is an inference from this paper combined with the broader pipeline literature, not a direct causal finding of the study itself. (edworkingpapers.com)

The paper’s biggest value, then, is not the exact percentage. It is the challenge it poses to a familiar administrative habit: equating a license with a viable candidate. As districts think about 2026-27 and beyond, the question is no longer just how many educators could legally move into leadership. It is how many still believe the job is doable, desirable, and worth rearranging a life to take. Until districts can answer that, many principal pipelines may remain larger on spreadsheets than they are in reality. (edworkingpapers.com)