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 The principal's post is changing at warp speed. Yet today's typical principal doesn't look a whole lot different from yesterday's — 50 years old, White, with 25 years in education, 10 as a teacher. The big change is in gender: A principal is much more likely to be a woman today than even a few years ago. More than 40 percent of elementary principals are now women, up about 20 percent in just a decade. Overall, the percentage of female principals rose from 25 to 35 percent between 1987 and 1993, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. "Perhaps the most important ability of today's school leader is to be a culture builder, one who instills the values of concern for others, personal and group success, and continuous improvement." While women have made big inroads in building leadership, minorities have not. More than 17 percent of students nationwide are African American (32 percent in central cities). Yet only 11 percent of elementary principals are African American, a U.S. Department of Education study found in the mid-1990s. Fewer than 5 percent of principals are Hispanic, despite an exploding Hispanic enrollment that tops 14 percent nationally and 24 percent in the inner city. Just 1 percent or less are Asian/Pacific Islander or Indian/Alaska Native. The nation's principal force of 80,000 is expected to swell by as much as 20 percent in the next five years as enrollments surge. At the same time, close to half of K-8 principals are expected to quit or retire in the next 10 years. On the plus side, openings create opportunities for diversity and innovation. On the downside, attracting capable candidates is getting tougher as the job itself becomes increasingly taxing. The typical principal puts in a grueling 54-hour week — nine hours longer than in 1978, researchers James Doud and Edward Keller found in a 10-year study by the National Association of Elementary School Principals. And the pay, many principals say, fails to fully compensate for the sacrifices in personal time and the headaches of a bloated duty roster. While the average principal makes $60,000 — about $20,000 more than the average teacher — the gap narrows when you compare principals' pay with that of veteran teachers. Olson points out in Education Week that an experienced high school teacher who takes on coaching or after-school club supervision can earn as much as an entry-level principal. Already overworked and underpaid, principals now must heed the cries — growing ever louder — for standards and accountability. The standards movement calls for schools to align their curricula with district, state, and, in some cases, national frameworks. And, when test scores come back, newspapers trumpet stories on Page One about which schools are meeting standards — and which ones are falling short. In Seattle, districtwide principal training has shifted its focus this year from leadership skills to the district's new academic learning standards, which are aligned with the state's benchmarks. Joanne Testa-Cross isn't worried; her school's scores are on target. But other principals are nervous. Rewards and consequences for building leaders will depend on how their teachers and students perform, according to Pat Kile, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Seattle's Alliance for Education. "Principals will be held accountable for what goes on in their school," says Kile, whose organization sponsors the district's Principal Leadership Institute (see Preparing to Lead). "I think it's imposing a whole lot of stress on lots of people in the district." Keeping your eyes on stringent new standards while steering a truckload of other tasks down the road requires some clever maneuvering. Education Secretary Richard Riley summed it up in a September speech when he said, "Principals have to be close to magicians to balance day-to-day demands while redesigning their schools for the future." The 10-year NAESP study found no fewer than 12 major areas of principal responsibility:
Faced with this triple-trailer task load, principals must prioritize. The research holds important clues to which tasks are linked most closely with kids' academic performance. "Studies consistently point to one leadership behavior in particular that is tied to student achievement: sustaining a schoolwide purpose focusing on student learning," write Stuart Smith and Philip Piele in School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence published in 1997 by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management in Eugene, Oregon (see Resources on School Leadership). Bess Keller, writing in Education Week, concurs. "More and more research suggests that...an aggressive, achievement-centered approach pays off," she says. She cites a recent study led by Willis Hawley, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Maryland. In schools big and small, in communities rich and poor, the common denominator for high performance was a principal who demanded high-quality teaching, tracked student achievement, and recruited good teachers — in short, they are instructional leaders, Keller reports. "Principals of the less successful schools," she notes, "functioned more as managers, and had low instructional expectations for teachers." The twin prongs of the principalship — leadership and management — receive much discussion in the leadership literature. John Pejza, in a paper presented to the National Catholic Education Association in 1985, cuts right to the heart of the distinction between leadership and management when he says, "You lead people; you manage things." While a principal's "to do" list will always include managerial duties, it's the instructional side of the job that should get the lion's share of her time and attention, most experts agree. "A dominant belief in policy circles, driven in large part by the academic standards movement, is that principals, instead of being building managers, should become leaders of instruction — dynamic, inspirational educators focused almost exclusively on raising student achievement," Olson asserts in Education Week. Here's the catch: Unless and until schools can afford to hire two people at the top — one to handle building operations and another to focus on teaching and learning — principals are responsible for both. Portin and colleagues point to this constant push and pull as contributing to a "decline in morale and enthusiasm" among building leaders. But this is where another trend in the principalship — shared decisionmaking — can come to the rescue. Sharing the lead means sharing the load. And, research suggests, principals who blend strong instructional leadership with a collaborative style also get the best results from the classroom. A 1997 Chicago study, for instance, found big differences in leadership between low-performing schools and schools that had made recent strides in student achievement. Besides having stronger local school councils, the high-performing schools had principals who: (1) involved teachers more in school decisions; (2) emphasized teaching and learning; and (3) monitored follow-through of school improvement plans. The study's author, Donald Moore, Executive Director for Designs for Change, says: "The study suggests that an instructional leader having a clear vision for the school and high expectations but open to the views of others...is good for the school."
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The New Principal Special Report:
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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