TY  - JOUR
AB  - States' licensure requirements typically mean that new school principals and assistant principals must come from the pool of educators holding an administrative license. Yet if many license- holders are uninterested in leadership positions, even districts with large numbers of licensed educators may face a constrained supply of leaders. Using statewide administrative and survey data from Tennessee, we take a mixed-methods approach to characterize educators who hold administrative licenses but are not currently in school leadership roles, distinguishing an "available" pool of educators who are pursuing or intend to pursue such roles from an "unavailable" pool who are not. We find that 53% of the pool of seemingly eligible leadership candidates is, in fact, unavailable. The unavailable pool is older and more experienced than the available pool, and many unavailable license-holders report having once aspired to school leadership before losing interest. Analysis of open-ended survey responses shows that perceived stress and unrealistic expectations of the role, incompatibility with family obligations, insufficient compensation, and a scarcity of open positions are the most common reasons license- holders give for opting out. These findings suggest that the pool of leadership candidates available to districts may be considerably smaller than license-holder counts imply, and that improving leaders' pay and working conditions may be necessary to expand the effective supply of school leaders.
AU  - Arturo Santelli, Francisco
AU  - Grissom, Jason A.
PY  - 2026
ST  - An Untappable Pipeline? Examining Why Many Educators with Administrative Licenses Do Not Pursue School Leadership
TI  - An Untappable Pipeline? Examining Why Many Educators with Administrative Licenses Do Not Pursue School Leadership
UR  - http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1560
ER  -