Leadership Week, Day 2: Less is More. Therefore, is More Less?

A continuing look at the evolution of the school principal. For part 1, see here.

Today’s article is Towards the ‘Highly Qualified’ Principal (Education Week, December 12th) by Joseph Aguerrebere (pronounced Smith) of the National Board, Paul Houston of the AASA, and and Gerald Tirozzi of the NASSP. Three wise men who know much about school leadership, certainly.

Their central belief can be found a few paragraphs in:

We need a nationwide advanced-certification system for principals if we are going to meet national student-learning goals. Such a system would clarify the skills, knowledge, and achievements that set highly qualified principals apart from peers with minimal credentials. Currently, there are no such national standards and assessments.

Why have the federal government take a guiding hand in crafting the standards for principals? Their belief is that the first NCLB act in 2001 was far too vague when they constructed their highly qualified language for teachers; the wide amount of latitude given to the states created 50 different systems and a paperwork nightmare for the Department of Education to have to figure out. A federal role, then, could add clarity.

They also share some of the language on principals that came out of the discussion draft of the NCLB reauthorization that was circulated in November:

…(it) includes a proposal to fund principal training in the use of data, improving instruction for all students, and literacy development. It also would pay “exemplary, highly qualified” principals annual bonuses of up to $15,000 for each of the four years that they worked in a high-need school and provide all principals up to $4,000 in annual bonuses based on the performance of their schools, particularly on tests that demonstrated student improvement over time.

Two bits of snark that I’ve got to get out of the way. First, if principals don’t know how to use data, then that’s a problem that the university programs they went through need to fix (sort of like was talked about yesterday). Secondly, I’m not really a big fan of the federal government providing bonuses to move principals to action; that seems like something that should happen more on a state or district level.

The rest of the article is spent encouraging the congress to put language into the NCLB reauthorization, whenever it might happen, that would begin the creation of a sort of national board certification for principals. It would be voluntary, but the hope is that there would be both remunerative and prestige enhancements for getting the certificate.

I’m curious as to how many principals would take the time, though. Running a school is not an easy task; would many volunteer to take on the rigors of the National Board, especially when you consider the existing demands? Is it worth it to the principals to spend the effort, when they're already pretty well compensated?

To my mind, the best way to improve the principalship is to strengthen the quality of the candidates going in, and for districts to then be proactive in identifying those who don't have what it takes. The principalship should not be a patronage job (nor should any in public service), and those who can't shouldn't.