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For more than 30 years North Carolina has been a national leader in principal preparation. The state created the Principal Fellows program and Transforming Principal Preparation Program (TP3) to provide funding for exemplary educators to pursue a school administration degree. In recent years, North Carolina has allocated millions of dollars toward full-time, yearlong internships for principal candidates. Collectively, these investments have helped over 2,000 North Carolinians experience innovative, high-quality, and financially accessible principal preparation.
In 2025, North Carolina has taken a step back from this rich history of excellence. In April, the state Senate’s proposed budget eliminated funding for full-time principal internships. Now, without a new state budget, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is only able to allocate money for principal candidates to have a three-month — rather than 10-month — internship.
A shortened internship will be a diminished internship. Principal candidates will not get to experience the same range of school leader responsibilities, and many interns may need to stay in another role (e.g., teacher, instructional coach) to ensure that they have a job and income throughout the 2025-26 school year. By staying in another position, interns will be less focused on learning to become school administrators and will have fewer opportunities to develop school leadership skills.
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Why does the loss of a full-time principal internship matter? First, after teachers, principals are the most important, school-based, influence on students’ learning and development. Principals impact the entire school. Second, research shows that the principal internship is the most important aspect of school leader preparation. Without it, the future leaders of our public schools are less prepared.
Our own work at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) highlights the value of the principal internship. For the last four years we have evaluated the Principal Fellows program. This has included analyses of state data, surveys of program completers, and interviews with Principal Fellow program directors, mentor principals, and Fellows in intern and assistant principal roles.
These data have convincingly shown that an internship matters. As stated by a Principal Fellows program director, “The internship is a big difference maker for students because the only way to really learn how to be an administrator is to be there full-time as an administrator.”
In surveys, principal candidates with a full-time, yearlong internship report being more involved in key aspects of running the school and are more likely to report having a highly valuable internship.
Principal Fellows explicitly name the internship as the most valuable aspect of their preparation program, with one intern conveying that, “(The internship) gave me the opportunity to experience administration full on, real life, 100%, but still have the safety net of an assistant principal and a principal there to support me and wean me into it.”
Perhaps the best way to assess the impact of a full-time, yearlong internship is from the perspective of assistant principals reflecting on their preparation experiences. We find that assistant principals who completed a yearlong internship feel better prepared for key school leadership tasks and are more confident in their ability to be an effective assistant principal.
As shared by a first-year assistant principal, “You cannot compare what we had to someone taking a traditional program where they have to get three hours of administrative experience, but still be in their classroom. We lived it, breathed it for an entire year… I don’t feel hesitant. I feel very confident in what I do.”
School leadership matters and the internship is an integral part of leadership preparation. As the 2025-26 school year begins, it is important for state and local education officials to know about North Carolina’s diminished internship and to take action that supports our state’s history of excellence in principal preparation.
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