Nothing is more important to the near and long-term future of Baltimore than the quality of its public schools. Having strong teachers, involved parents, and kids coming to school prepared to learn are all important components of high quality schools. However, in many years of working with and in City schools, one of the most important characteristics of a high achieving school has become extremely clear to me: a great principal.
A school’s principal is the undisputed captain of his or her “ship”. I have seen time and time again how a strong, dynamic, compassionate, well-organized principal can literally make or break a school. This crystallized for me a few years ago when I had the occasion to work with three schools in the same circumscribed neighborhood of the City (not to be disclosed here!).
Despite serving children of identical socioeconomic status, one of the three schools had significantly better academic achievement scores, markedly fewer disciplinary actions and remarkably more inviting interior spaces than the other two. Not surprisingly, that school had a stellar principal. She was in the halls all the time; she knew all the students’ names and employed firm but compassionate corrective measures when necessary; she thought outside the box; and did everything she could to bring effective outside resources into her school.
My audacious idea is simple: The Baltimore City Schools CEO should launch a “Great Principal Initiative” and set about recruiting the best possible people to fill this incredibly important role in our 180+ city schools. The key would be to obtain a waiver from state and city position requirements. As the qualities that make a great principal do not necessarily require an education background (indeed, there is much to be said for having a fresh approach to entrenched problems in schools), our CEO should be free to recruit excellent managers from the private or non-profit sector who have a passion for improving children’s lives. We might even get some large corporations to allow one of their top managers to take a lengthy sabbatical to be principal of a school with which that company develops a relationship. Don’t get me wrong—I highly respect educators, as my mother-in-law and mother were both teachers, but I sincerely do not believe that principals must have such a background. So, although this proposal will cause some waves, particularly among the teachers’ union, it is much more important that we do all we can to improve our schools for the kids’ sake.
Peter Beilenson says: “as the qualities that make a great principal do not necessarily require an education background (indeed, there is much to be said for having a fresh approach to entrenched problems in schools), our CEO should be free to recruit excellent managers from the private or non-profit sector who have a passion for improving children’s lives.
This is more of the current LEADER, CHANGE AGENT, TRANSFORMATION AGENT nonsense: we NEED people who can manage instructional leadership; business people should be in service to the former.
Please read Richard Elmore’s paper “Building a New Structure for School Leadership” (2000) which you can find on the Albert Shanker Institute’s website. He is the most insightful thinker and voice on this topic. Admittedly his paper makes the case much better than I ever could.
Great leadership is, as Peter says, extremely important and can be a key determinant of the degree of success a school achieves. I’ve seen this everywhere I’ve taught in my sixteen years as a classroom teacher. That said, as an idea it is hardly audacious but rather well accepted. The Maryland Department of Education, for instance, has an entire leadership development division, run by one of the best principals ever known to this part of the world. However, like in any other profession, greatness is rare. I wish all doctors and lawyers were great as well. The best in any field can be attracted in two ways, higher pay and rewarding environments. The private schools have always paid less but gotten teachers who are at least as good as average public school teachers, many would say, better. Neither situation exists in the most troubled situations unless a candidate is enormously ambitious as well.
When it comes to the question about having an education background, it’s true that people can learn to deal with kids on the job, but probably not as principals. Again, the private school sector chooses promising people, who display some social skills, and then often allows them to learn classroom management, pedagogy and the myriad other issues involved in great teaching. Some make it, some don’t. If seen extremely successful business people reduced to rubble, casually, by students. The business, or even government management ethos is very different than what exists when you’re dealing with young people who don’t mind if you “fire” them. This country’s near worship of business acumen is almost unfair to business people entering other fields, as when Ross Perot got a real education about political skill.
As Livinia says, there is excellent literature on this subject, I would also recommend the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). What the literature does not discuss, nearly as much, are the issues at the heart of failures in education: communities, families and culture. That is far more complex and fraught with political landmines–hence the problem.
I appreciate Dr. Beilenson’s idea. However, I think that he should learn about New Leaders for New Schools, which already does what he is suggesting. Also, I think that in opening up the schools to private management CEOs, we would have to pay principals- and teachers- what they deserve, based on the results they achieve, much as in the business world. I would love to find someone in the business world who wants to be responsible for – and paid according to the success of- the teachers whom he cannot hire or fire and the children whose lives he cannot control outside his doors. It’s very easy to manage skilled, educated adults or various properties or computer systems; it’s a lot harder to teach in an unheated classroom, provide uniforms for homeless children, create a culture of learning without parental involvement, and not be crushed by the knowledge that your students are unsafe, unloved, and unprotected when they leave you each afternoon. The principal with whom Dr. Beilenson was so impressed obviously loves children, as do most educators. If those managers love children, long hours, no tangible rewards or bonuses, and no respect, I invite them to take the salary cut, buy some warm socks, and jump in.
After reading Amy Waldman’s Jan/Feb 2007, Atlantic Monthly article on post-Katrina NOLA schools, “Reading, Writing, Resurrection”, my thoughts were; the principal is key! You will see the good, the bad, the businessman:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200701/waldman-katrina
In an era when superintendents get under the table pay from community citizens to stay in a post and not follow the money, then leave 2 years later for more money as half the teachers in the district need to be shuffled due to schools not meeting AYP for 6 years, how do you expect to create loyalty from principals? Leadership starts from the top down, and if you look across the nation, supers take the media hits but don’t stay. Lots of resistance from unions, etc.
Why not draw candidates from a loyal invested, insider base? parents. Drop in a CPA and the local PTA or PTO. Why are we so afraid to give parents some local control?