The Principal and the School

principal The chief administrative officer of the school who is responsible for school operation. agencies, processing payroll and contracts, monitoring human resources, and overseeing construction, transportation, and purchasing. Recent efforts in several major school districts are transforming central offices to partner more with school-based personnel, especially school principals, to help improve instruction in every classroom.19

7-1d the Principal and the school

Most schools have a single administrative officer, a principal, who is responsible for school operations. Interestingly, 64 percent of primary school and 30 percent of high school principals are women. In small schools, the principal may teach part-time as well; large schools may have one or more assistant or vice principals to share the administrative responsibilities. The administrative hierarchy may also include department chairpersons, discipline officers (for instance, a dean of students), and guidance counselors. Each of these individuals works closely with the school principal and under his or her direction. Furthermore, most principals work with a community-based school improvement group, often a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) or a professional learning community.20

Traditionally, the most important aspect of the principal’s job is the role of manager: dealing with day-to-day school operations, meetings, paperwork, phone calls, and community relations. Today, however, there is increasing pressure to demonstrate improved student performance on mandated assessments. Principals must focus on the cycle of curriculum development, instruction, assessment, and data analysis. The successful principal has to be adept at collaborating with various stakeholders to make data-driven decisions that raise student achievement.21

In the past, secondary-school principals were often considered primarily as general managers, whereas elementary-school principals viewed themselves as leaders in curriculum and instruction.22 This was likely because larger secondary schools create more managerial work for the principal. Today, however, because of the emphasis on raising academic achievement for all students, principals are taking a more active role as an instructional leader focused on improving teaching and learning (Photo 7.1). Additionally, they are spending more of their time in formal observations of teachers due to the new requirements from the state and federal levels.

As a teacher, how will you interact with your principal? In large secondary schools, a teacher’s interaction with the principal might be minimal, consisting of primarily formal observations; faculty meetings; cafeteria, hall, or bus duty; and conversations in the main office. In contrast, many elementary-school teachers have frequent, almost daily, contact with the principal, and these encounters can cover a wide range of school- and student-related issues.

Customarily, authority concerning school policies flows from the top down, from the school board through the superintendent and central office staff to the principal.

19Christina Samuels, “District Central Offices Take on New Roles,” Education Week (July 18, 2012), p. 13; and University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership and Meredith I. Honig, The Central Office Transformation Toolkit, (Seattle: University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, November 2013). 20Laura A. Cooper, “The Principal as Instructional Leader,” Principal (January 1989), pp. 13–16; Allan C. Ornstein, “Leaders and Losers,” Executive Educator (August 1993), pp. 28–30; and Amy Bitterman, Rebecca Goldring, and Lucinda Gray, “Table 2: Average and Median Age of School Principals, and Percentage Distribution of Principals, by Age Category, Sex, School Type, and Selected School Characteristics: 2011–12,” Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States: Results from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (NCES 2013-313), (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2013) at http:// nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013313 (January 16, 2015). 21Douglas B. Reeves, “Looking Deeper into the Data,” Educational Leadership (December 2008), pp. 89–90; and Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, and International SRI, “School Leadership: A Key to Teaching Quality. A Policy Brief on the Role of Principals in Strengthening Instruction,” Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (January 1, 2011). 22Lynn K. Bradshaw, “The Changing Role of Principals in School Partnerships,” NASSP Bulletin (May 2000) pp. 86–96; and Lesi A. Maxwell, “Principals Hard-Pressed for Time to Be Instructional Leaders,” Education Week (March 26, 2014), pp. 1, 24; and David DeMatthews, “Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Principals Need to Know,” The Educational Forum (January 2015).