Purpose: Knowledge about principals’ leadership roles in charter schools’
success has become more important as the number of charter schools
increases and as we have learned more about the influence of principal
leadership on school effectiveness. To contribute to the limited empirical
literature on the principal labor market, this study explores the reasons for
the disparity of turnover rates between charter school principals and their
counterparts in traditional public schools (TPSs). It focuses on the differential
distributions of observable factors, including principal characteristics,
principal leadership practices, school contexts, and working conditions. It
also examines how the associations between these observables and the
likelihood of principal turnover differ between these two types of schools.