Principals are the leverage point for education reforms and the primary drivers of school improvement. A critical part of maintaining a corps of effective principals is rewarding and retaining the best school leaders. Unfortunately, few systems systematically identify principals that make important contributions to student learning or celebrate that success. Despite the importance and demands of the principalship, most state and local educational agency (LEA) salary structures promote lockstep compensation based on years of experience and degree attainment. These systems ignore performance on the job, differences in school conditions, and variance in leadership responsibilities. The failure to recognize the hard work of great principals--through both a lack of recognition and singular compensation structures--and lack of meaningful growth opportunities make it difficult to recruit new talent and retain existing principals. Finally, research has shown that high-poverty and high-minority schools are more frequently led by principals with weaker job ratings than lower-poverty schools. And turnover in high-poverty schools is approximately ten percent higher than in low-poverty schools. In order to promote career advancement and retain the most talented leaders, this brief recommends federal policymakers: (1) Recognize and reward great leaders; (2) Support continued growth of school leaders; and (3) Connect evaluation results and personnel decisions. [For the full series, see "Prioritizing Leadership: New Leaders' Federal Policy Platform" (ED559351).]