Beyond the Checklist: A High Reliability Approach to Principal Evaluation

On October 27, Dr. Robert J. Marzano joined Lorah Neville, Executive Director of Marzano Evaluation Center, for a webinar on using a high reliability perspective for principal evaluation. His central argument was simple: an evaluation that only confirms what a principal is doing misses the more important question of whether it is working.

By: Marzano Evaluation Center

October 2026

Watch the Webinar

Using a High Reliability Perspective for Principal Evaluation, with Dr. Robert J. Marzano and Lorah Neville, October 27, 2026.

From “Are You Doing It?” to “Is It Working?”

Dr. Marzano traced the idea back to the school effectiveness movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Researchers such as Ron Edmonds, Wilbur Brookover, and Larry Lezotte studied outlier schools, those that performed better than their demographics predicted, and identified what they had in common: clear goals for student learning, a clear instructional model, and other concrete practices.

That was a major step forward from judging schools by their resources. But, as Dr. Marzano put it, the field largely stopped there. Evaluation became a matter of checking whether a school was doing the right things.

“Just because you’re doing it doesn’t mean that it’s working.”

Dr. Robert J. Marzano

A high reliability perspective raises the bar: an effective school makes sure that what it does actually works.

Leading and Lagging Indicators

High reliability organizations, such as hospitals, the military, and first responders, work on the assumption that they can’t afford to fail. They monitor constantly and catch problems early. Dr. Marzano described two kinds of indicators at the heart of that approach:

• Leading indicators are the programs and practices you put in place because you expect them to produce a good result.
• Lagging indicators are the data that show whether those programs and practices are producing the result you wanted.

He outlined five stages. In the first three, a school moves from not engaging in improvement activities, to beginning them, to fully implementing them. That is where the school effectiveness era ended. In stage four, the school collects lagging indicator data showing its activities are working. In stage five, it keeps checking with what he called “quick data” to continue improving and avoid sliding back.

The question at the center of it all, he said, is one that is rarely asked directly: “If this were working, what would it look like?”

A Lesson from an Aircraft Carrier

Dr. Marzano’s son spent 30 years in the Navy, including command of two aircraft carriers. On a family “tiger cruise” from Hawaii to San Diego, Dr. Marzano watched the ship’s daily operations up close, including the FOD walk. Before every day and night of flight operations, everyone available, the commanding officer included, lines up shoulder to shoulder and walks the flight deck looking for foreign objects and debris that could destroy a jet engine.

The Navy doesn’t call it high reliability, he noted, but every element is there: defined practices for every department, and protocols to monitor whether they are working. That is what a high reliability approach looks for in a school leader. Having programs and practices in place is not enough; the leader is monitoring whether they produce the desired effect.

The Same Scale, Applied to the School Leader

Dr. Marzano noted that the Marzano Focused School Leader Evaluation Model has used the same scale for 15 years, with each level defined by evidence:

• 0
  Not Using: the area is not yet on the leader’s radar.
• 1
  Beginning: programs and practices have started but are not complete.
• 2
  Developing: programs and practices are in place, but lagging indicators don’t yet show their effect.
• 3
  Applying: programs and practices are in place, and lagging indicators show the desired effect.
• 4
  Innovating: the leader operates at the applying level and keeps gathering data to make sure progress holds.

Why insist on evidence of results? Dr. Marzano pointed to his own meta-analytic work and to research syntheses such as John Hattie’s: across many studies, no strategy works every time, and in some large syntheses roughly a third of the results were negative. Level of implementation is often the reason. That is why the scale pushes past Developing to Applying, where results must show up in the data.

A Worked Example: A Safe and Culturally Responsive School

To make it concrete, Dr. Marzano walked through one element from the model’s Core Values Domain 5: Element 3, The school leader ensures the school is perceived as safe and culturally responsive.

Under a checklist approach, a principal names a few things they are doing and checks the box. Incorporating a high reliability perspective, the leader:

1. Identifies the programs and practices for each part of the element, such as safety of the physical plant, access to communication devices, practice of safety procedures, classroom strategies, and the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents.
2. Names the lagging indicator data for each, such as inspection reports, the percentage of staff with access to communication devices, or how often safety procedures are practiced.
3. Sets criteria, such as 100 percent of critical areas meeting safety standards.

Status or Growth?

Those criteria raise a design choice for districts. A status model sets fixed expectations every leader must meet. A growth model asks each school leader to set criteria they can reach this year, then raises them over time. A new principal in a struggling school might start with 50 percent of critical areas meeting safety standards rather than 100.

Dr. Marzano favors growth. Status models, he noted, tend to inflate scores, because evaluators don’t want to give a low rating that might harm someone. A growth model starts from where the leader is and asks what is reachable next. Either way, district leadership and the school leader curate the criteria collaboratively using the Focused School Leader Evaluation Model.

Trim Tabs: Monitoring What Matters Most

Applied across every element of the model, the list of programs and practices quickly becomes too long to monitor. Dr. Marzano’s answer is trim tab indicators. On an aircraft wing, a trim tab is a small device whose small corrections have a large effect on the plane. School leaders identify the few programs and practices with the biggest effect and, with their supervisor’s approval, monitor those.

Defined Autonomy: What the District Decides

Borrowing a term from Tim Waters, Dr. Marzano described defined autonomy: the district decides which programs and practices it will require and which it will leave to school leaders. With that in place, he said, evaluation moves from a paper chase to something living, something that actually helps the school leader get better.

Where High Reliability Schools Fits

For districts involved in High Reliability Schools, Dr. Marzano clarified the relationship at the start of the session. Marzano Resources certifies High Reliability Schools but does not do evaluation; Instructional Empowerment and Marzano Evaluation Center provide evaluation but not certification. The school leader evaluation model, he said, can dovetail with HRS work, and vice versa.

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