Secret and Confidential to the Association of Washington School Principals

There are people in the world who can look really, really good in an 8x10 headshot.

The segment of your membership (hell, of people in education in general) that can pull that particular trick off is a very, very, very small fraction indeed.

So how about cutting the picture of the person featured in the profile in the usually-excellent "Principal News" magazine down to, let's say, 2 inches by 3 inches? That'd be cool.

Your pal,

Ryan

Read more here, if any.

Failed the Morals Clause

In my most recent principal’s certificate class I got an A on the major paper, an A- on the major presentation, and nailed the final, too.

I’m rather sad that they threw me out of the program.

Read more here, if any.

I Saw It Coming, But That Didn’t Make It Any Easier

Longtime readers know that I’ve been enrolled in a school leadership program this year with an eye towards maybe, eventually making the transition from classroom to the principalship. I’ve done well in my classes—I’d recommend Eastern’s program to anyone—but there’s been a nagging fear in the back of my head for a while now: my union work.

The circumstances that lead to me becoming president of my local are colorful, and when I’ve managed to get some more distance from the situation I’ll probably spill exactly why I took the office. At the end of the day, though, it’s left me in a position where I’m the union president, the lead negotiator for our open contract, and the political action coordinator for my local Uniserv council—I’m in it up to my neck, and that’s OK because I really like my union work.

There’s the problem, though, and it involves the administrative internship that is required before you can get your principal’s certificate. During the internship you need to make the transition from teacher to administrator, to be able to look at situations with an administrator’s eye, and be able to take part in the functions of the school from a completely administrative point of view. As union president, though, I can’t do that.

As an example, let’s consider disciplinary actions. Recently in my school we discovered that one of the paraprofessionals (parapros) had a folder on her computer where she was storing some racy, racy pictures that she’d found on the internet. They were discovered by the tech when he was doing routine maintenance. The para and the superintendent met that same day with the PSE president, the para was out the door that same afternoon, and she was out of a job within just a couple of days. This all happened under the watch of the administrative intern I have in my building now.

Now consider if that was a teacher. What’s my role in the room: administrative intern, or union president? Here you truly can’t live in both worlds, because those two worlds are in conflict. It doesn’t work.

So on Wednesday before class I met with the two men who run my program, and they laid it all out on the table: either quit your union work, or quit the program. I told them that with negotiations having begun the day before I simply could not do that—not only would it be unethical, but when word got around that Ryan quit on the members so that he could go play administrator any chance that I would have to lead the teachers from a moral viewpoint would be completely ruined. People would understand me moving into administration; people would not understand me leaving them in the lurch to pursue my own interests.

So I had to make a choice, but there was only one choice to make. I’m going to have to give back the state-funded internship grant that I received from the Association of Washington School principals, and after I complete the class I’m in now it’s game over. Maybe the year will come where I’m out of my involvement with the WEA and where I’m not representing the people in my district, and then I can look at making the shift.

As for now, though, this will need to be a dream deferred.

Read more here, if any.

Why Be a Principal?

Charlene Milota, vice-principal in a Spokane school and President of the Association of Washington School Principals, wrote her final column for the AWSP’s thrice-yearly magazine in the most recent issue. In it she shares her top ten reasons to become a principal:

10) Every day is a surprise.
9) Become a lifelong learner by observing great teachers.
8) Build the kind of school climate you would want to teach and learn in.
7) Support disenfranchised kids—be the constant as kids move from teacher to teacher.
6) Where else can you feel like a rock star while grocery shopping?
5) Hire, mentor and support your team of teachers and support staff.
4) Attend world class sports, music, and drama events—FOR FREE!
3) Play a significant community role by positively influencing parents and others.
2) Impact student’s lives, one child at a time.

And the number on reason to become a principal:

1) Someone believes in you!

This is nice, but as someone looking to enter that job market I need to narrow the field and would like to scare off as many fellow wannabe principals as I can. To that end, I give you

The Top 10 Reasons NOT to Become a Principal
10) Every day is a surprise. Pearl Harbor was a surprise, too.

9) Become a lifelong cynic by observing terrible teachers and not having the power to do anything about it.

8) Work in the kind of school climate that makes Office Space look like Google.

7) Be the constant as kids move from teacher to teacher, so when They start wondering why the test scores are low They can fire the constant—you.

6) Where else can you develop the patience of Job while sitting in on your 5th meeting of the day?

5) Hire, mentor, support, evaluate, remediate, disaggregate, contemplate, and finally defenestrate your team of teachers and support staff.

4) Attend world-class sports, music, and drama events—frequently. If you’re in the high school, nightly. You’ll also be criticized for the ones you fail to attend.

3) Play a significant role in community gossip circles after you make what seemed like a simple, innocuous decision…until it blew up in your face.

2) Have your life impacted, 600 students and 40 staff members at a time.

And the number one reason NOT to become a principal…..

1) Someone might believe in you, but that’s not a measurable quantity under No Child Left Behind.

Have a happy day!!!~!

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Leadership Week, The Big Finale: Getting Serious About Leadership

Last in a series of articles about the changing role of the principalship. For others, see here.
The last article about leadership from the December 12th Education Week that I’d like to talk about is by M. Christine Devita of the Wallace Foundation called “Getting Serious About Leadership.” It’s a general paean to the importance of improving school leadership, but there are some good points that deserve more attention. Consider:

The importance of having high-quality teaching in the classroom is a given. But we often fail to recognize that it is the principal alone who can ensure that the teaching and learning in every classroom are as good as they can be.

This is a fairly pervasive train of thought that I’ve noticed the past few months; here in Washington State, for example, it’s a cornerstone of the education platform of gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi. I think in part it’s a capitulation, because the reality of school improvement is that it’s easier to make one principal better than it is 30 teachers. As a later quote says,

If leadership is in fact the critical bridge to having school improvements pay off for children, we need to understand how to better prepare principals to lead the increasingly complex institution we call school, so that all children can learn to high standards.

Principal leadership begets student achievement. It’s a subtle change in the conversation, but an important one.

To back up the article Ms. Devita uses two different reports: “How Leadership Influences Student Learning” by Ken Leithwood and the exceptionally well written “Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World” by Linda Darling-Hammond.

One quibble I have comes when the article turns to how best support principals:

New York City’s school system has set demanding criteria for would-be principals to enter its leadership academy and to get a job leading one of the city’s 1,400 schools. Once selected, candidates are regularly evaluated and permitted to remain in the program only if they demonstrate required competency at periodic intervals, through assessments using various experiential processes such as simulation and role-playing.

It’s yahbut season. If you believe the blogosphere (and hey, who doesn’t?) graduates of the leadership academy are given far more flexibility than they deserve in some cases, and many believe that the system is reluctant to pull the plug on bad leadership academy graduates because it makes the system look bad. It’s a program that ideally would do what it’s designed to do; I’m just wondering if the evidence is out there.

To all the principals out there, past, present, and future—I salute you.

Read more here, if any.

Leadership Week, Day 4: Data Wise

Yes, I know that leadership week has stretched into leadership weeks. There’s just that much leadership!

The recent Harvard Education Letter has an article related to the book Data Wise by Jennifer Steele and Kathryn Boudett. The beginning is an important lesson for anyone trying to move their staff in a number-savvy direction:

When delivering her opening-day speech to faculty at McKay K-8 School in Boston, second-year principal Almi Abeyta hoped that displaying recent state test results would “light a fire” among teachers and spark a powerful conversation about instructional improvement. Instead, teachers reacted with stunned silence, quickly followed by expressions of anger and frustration. It was the first they had heard about the prior year’s decline in language arts scores. Almi felt as if she “had dropped a bomb” on the room. Far from igniting collaborative energy, her presentation of achievement data seemed to have squelched it.

Teachers are defensive about numbers. We should be; increasingly, that’s how we’re judged as professionals and people, and if the powers that be start linking the numbers to our pay then the issue becomes a deeply important one. That balancing act between numbers as a hammer vs. numbers as a scalpel might be the most critical discussion we have as we move education forward, and it’s why every teacher needs to have a good idea of what data means to them.

Read more here, if any.

Leadership Week, Day 3: The Instructional Coach vs. The Principal

Type the phrase “a principal needs to be” into Google and you’ll get quite a few different suggestions: a superhero, utterly reliable, aware, a manager, an educational leader, flexible, and so on. Take a look at the ISLLC standards for school leaders and you’ll get more suggestions, like instructional leader and curriculum expert.

Today it’s the instructional leader piece that I’d like to look at, and I’ll work it around this question: how does the role of the principal as instructional leader change in a school that has instructional coaches?

In the December 12th Education Week the article “Coaching Teachers to Help Students Learn” is all about how school districts are increasingly using coaching as a way to increase the skill of the teachers and improve practice in the classroom. In my area the Spokane School District has invested millions of dollars into their coaching program, with mixed success.

As it relates to our question, though, I think that perhaps focusing on the mission of the school rather than the imagined role of the principal is key. If curriculum coaches can help the goal of having all children learn, then the principal should be happy to see them there. It has to be acknowledged too that it’s an impossibility for principals to get into every classroom on a consistent basis to work with the teachers; again, if academic coaches can help, then the principal wins along with the staff.

I guess what I’m seeing, then, is a metamorphosis of the principal from instructional leader to more of a school manager, and that’s OK as long as those taking on the instructional leader roles (here, the coaches) are capable. The principal will still set the tone of the school, to be sure, but it’s the coaches who are going to know better what’s going on.

A couple of pieces from the article that I thought were interesting:

In comparing coaches to other programs that bid to increase student learning, education economist Eric A. Hanushek has reanalyzed data from Washington state. He found that $100 spent on classroom coaches would net student-learning gains “very similar” to those that the same amount spent on full-day kindergarten would achieve. And the gains from coaching would be about six times more than those for class-size reduction, according to Mr. Hanushek.

I would caution any reader to take what Hanushek says with a grain of salt, because he’s certainly arch-conservative when it comes to education finance, but that also adds some credibility to what he says here because it’s rare to find any additional spending in education that he likes.

Ah, but the problems are there as well. Speaking about how coaches are paid (Adams 12 is the district the article is focused on):

Unlike in Adams 12, where coaches are paid just the same as if they were classroom teachers, Dallas coaches get $6,000 added to their teacher salaries.

This bugs me. It feeds into the perception that “the farther away you are from the kids, the more money you make.” Is the workload of the coach more than that of a teacher? Can’t Dallas see how this would tend to breed cynicism?

There’s another financial issue as well:

Mr. Paskewicz, the superintendent, has warned that the district could be squeezed by as much as $6.7 million in the coming school year, mostly in order to pay the growing costs of employee health care and retirement.

If it’s a coach or a librarian, what do you choose? If it’s a coach or keeping class size in kindergarten below 25, what do you do? If it’s a coach or copies, what do you do? That’d be a hell of a survey to see, how teachers would rank order the cuts they’d want in their district, because that would show you how much they value the coaching they’re getting.

Read more here, if any.

Leadership Week: An Aside

Some stats on the changing of the guard in the principal’s office, from the January edition of NEA Today:

• Fewer than 5 percent of new principals come directly from the classroom; many now come from central office positions or coaching roles.
  
  
• 54% of new principals are women. Only 36% of principals with more than ten years in the field are women.
  
  
• 20% of new principals are ethnic minorities, compared to only 15% among the old guard.

The stats come from the EPE Research Center; you can find their report here.

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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.

Read more here, if any.

Leadership Week, Day 1: How To Improve the Principalship

As someone in a school administration program the December 12th edition of Education Week was an early Christmas present, because there are four superior articles on how the role of the principal is changing and what that will mean for the schools that must change as well. I thought it’d be neat to look at one article a day this week, because there’s that much good content to be found.

Leading off is “How States Can Build Leadership Systems,” by David Spense and Gene Bottoms of the Southern Regional Education Board. They’ve written an article on how states can improve the principal pipeline for themselves, and there’s some very good suggestions to be found:

• Be more precise about expectations for good leaders. The administration class that I had this fall was my first exposure to the ISLLC standards; they’re nice enough on their face, but they don’t tell you a whole heck of a lot about what it really means to be a principal. The fine print of a job announcement for a principal position would be a good place to start, if you’re interested in refining what it really means to be a school leader, because there you’ll find 20 or more bullet points about what’s expected.
  
  
• Be more selective about principal-candidates. The point they’re making here is that pretty much anyone can get into an administrative program. The article goes on to say that about half of principal program graduates never use the credential; for them, it was a path to a pay bump and nothing more. That seems odd to me when there are so many different master’s degree programs out there, but so be it.
  
  The article recommends that the schools and universities act as a sort of dual filter; encouraging great teachers to think about taking a step up on one end, putting them through a meaningful, rigorous program at the other. It’s a nice theory; I’d be interested to actually see it in action. Teachers College at Columbia University is a far, far different place than Central Washington University, after all.
  
  
• Ensure that university-based leadership programs improve. I’m spoiled, because Eastern has a superior administrative program. Here the authors say that many principal programs are mired in thinking that worked 50 years ago, that the classes needed often aren’t the classes taught, and what is taught is usable only in the most general sense.
  
  
• Help aspiring principals learn on the job. One of the problems they list isn’t really a problem at all, to my mind:
  
  Unfortunately, many principal preparation programs provide internships in name only. They allow interns to choose their own mentors and schools for their internship sites. Many programs also fail to provide trained mentors who can expertly demonstrate competence and coach others to meet the state’s leadership standards.
  
  Incredibly, one principal testified at an SREB conference on school leadership last year that her internship in graduate school had consisted of her collecting tickets at a high school football game!
  
  Number one, I call shenanigans. Is it possible that a principal intern might have collected tickets at a football game? Sure, just like if I’m able to do my internship next year it’s possible that I’ll be setting up bleachers for assemblies, wiping down tables in the lunchroom, and passing out band-aids in the nurses office, because that’s what the principal sometimes has to do. The football game story is an anecdote, nothing more.
  
  Number two, the reasons most interns choose the site of their internship is because they choose their work site. How else would you have them do it? It’s a very small subset of potential candidates who could afford to take a year off on a lark; is that what’s being suggested, here?
  
  
• Require more of beginning and veteran principals. Adding more rigor to the licensure process is the key, says the article. By requiring more proof of leadership ability and asking a principal to do more to keep their administrative certificate valid, the thought is that you’ll have better leaders.
  
  Ugh, ugh, ugh. This reeks of ProCert, the back-asswards process that teachers have to go through to keep their certificate, and the reasons that I wouldn’t want that for principals are much the same:
  
  
  • A principal jumping through hoops to keep their certificate is a principal spending less time with their school and their family.
    
  • Principals are at-will employees. Don’t like the performance? Can ‘em. Want them to attend workshops to get better? Dictate that struggling principals do so. Do not, however, punish good principals with more tedium just to fix a few bad apples.
    
  • If you make it too hard, you’re going to drive good people out of the profession. That doesn’t benefit anyone.
  
  
  Tomorrow’s article talks about voluntary national standards for principals, so this conversation will continue.
  
  
• Build better ways to find the leaders schools need. It’s the John Sanford model; provide ways for great leaders in other fields to come to the principalship, and train them up on the instructional piece on the fly. I don’t think that you can teach someone to be an instructional leader if they’ve never instructed, so this worries me.
  
  And finally,
  
  
• Provide stronger leadership for traditionally low-performing schools. One of the correlates of highly effective schools is the presence of a strong leader, which makes sense. The difficulty arises from what it would take to attract your best leaders to your neediest schools—more power and more pay. The second is an easy one to work around; the first, given the realities of collective bargaining and school politics, is much harder.

Leadership week continues tomorrow.

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Good News, Bad News

I’m really enjoying my intern membership in the Association of Washington School Principals. Their magazine is top notch, and I’m hoping that I can get to the assistant principals conference in February and learn more about administrative things.

As I’ve been going through my pile of reading material I came across their annual report, which details all their activities for the previous year. A number that jumped out at me was that they gave 257 grants last year through the program they administer that allows for time off for principal interns to learn the trade.

This is good, because I’d like to think I have a pretty decent shot at getting one of those grants.

This is bad, because that means there’s 257 other new principals out there who’ll be fighting for the jobs that come up.

Under the Dilbert Principle, I’m hoping that the fact that I’m tall will help be stand out (get it? Eh…) from the field.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Taking the Leap

I’ve decided to begin an administrative program this fall.

It’s sort of been an evolution. When I went into teaching I never would have figured myself as the guy in the principal’s office, but as the years have gone by a lot of the people I work with have said that they could see me doing it. My work with the Association has shown me, too, that the best way to represent your school is to have a seat at the table, and I’m hoping that I can do a lot of good for my school and my kids by taking that next step.

It’s also a tough decision, because of the Union. I like being vice-president of my local. I like being involved in my regional Uniserv office, and going to the WEA Leadership Academy next week may well be the highlight of my summer. I think that if I stuck with it I could have a shot at getting more leadership roles higher up, which would be a neat thing.

This is also our open year for our contract, so next summer we’ll be hitting the bargaining table again. That’s going to take a lot of my concentration, because there are some big issues that have presented themselves in recent years. It’s also a tough position, to bargain for the teachers while at the same time making plans to not be one of them any longer, but I think that people have enough faith in my character to know that I’m going to fight for the membership every bit as hard as I would otherwise. It’ll be fun!

The final deal-breaker was looking at where things could be going with my daughter. If the insurance says no to the cochlear implants, we may have to go it alone. She starts at the HOPE School, our area school for deaf kids, this fall in their toddler group, an expense that is covered by the county social services office, but there’s still a cost involved in the days that I’ll take off, the childcare, the transportation, the other extended learning opportunities that have shown success with deaf kids, etc. To provide the kind of life that I want to provide her, I have to step it up somewhere. The principalship seems like a good means to that end.

Frankly, it’s also an exciting proposition. Setting the agenda, leading the charge, helping a whole school be successful—I really like that idea. I doubt that I’d get a job right out of the program, but having the credential would give me options, and that’s always a happy thing.

I decided to go with Eastern, which was an easy, easy choice after speaking with Les Portner, who runs their leadership program. My Master’s degree was through EWU, so I’d already taken many of the classes required for the administrator’s certificate. With 5 classes and an internship, to be done in the 2008 – 2009 school year, I’ll be legal.

The classes look pretty interesting, too. Should give me a ton of fodder for the blog!

Read more here, if any.

The Principal Hiring Process

One of the things that I’d never done was to sit in on the interviews for principals in our district; the one time that we’d changed principals at my school the position was filled by a different administrator in the district, so no interviews required. With the recent retirement of our sitting principal, though, there were no transfers, so we had ourselves a hiring process.

There were two different tracks going on simultaneously—what was happening in my building, and what was happening at the district level. In my building we had a vote to select who would be on the hiring committee; it was a good process that gave the staff a lot of confidence in who was representing them, and I give our superintendent a lot of credit for letting us choose our own people. The rumor mill was also churning like mad, mainly with speculation about the position and what it could mean for us all next year.

Meanwhile, at the district office, they were busy winnowing down the initial pool of 20 applicants to a reasonable number for interviews. I was pretty surprised that we only had 20 applicants; we’re a pretty respectable school in a pretty respectable district, and I thought that more would be interested.

The initial 20 was narrowed down to 17; those 17 were all given what’s known as the Ventures Screening, which is essentially another layer of interviewing where the candidate meets with a team of administrators to respond to What if…? and How do…? type questions. As a district we’ve had a lot of luck with it, though it is a bit of a double-edged sword, because if the Ventures misses and the candidate washes out it makes the screening look really, really bad.

Anyhow, after the Ventures they had a list of six candidates. Interviews were set up for the last week of school (which was fine with me, because it got me out of my classroom for two days during the silly season), and we were on our way.

The interviews were one of the toughest experiences I’ve ever had as a teacher, because all 6 of the candidates were great in different ways. This one had an infectious energy that would be great to work for, that one has the kind of experience that helps you respect the decisions they make. This one knows special ed inside out, but this one is a whiz-bang math teacher and we could sure use someone with that kind of clout.

Our superintendent wanted three out of the six; she would then choose one of those three to be our principal. She also wanted unanimity in our choices, meaning that any one of us could support any one of the candidates, and that was hard. By the end of the discussion there were some frayed nerves and upset stomachs, but I don’t think anyone was made at anyone else—it was just the mental processing that went along with the selection process.

In the end, I think our Superintendent made a hell of a hire. I’m really looking forward to working with our new leader next year, and it’s nice to have been an integral part of the search process.

When your district hires principals, how involved are the teachers in the building in choosing who the new administrator will be?

Read more here, if any.

Uh oh...the Principals Have Found the Internet!

The Association of Washington School Principals has launched their own blog, The Comp Book, with contributions from their communication director. There's only a few months of posting to go off of, but so far it's being updated very regularly with news of interest to anyone who follows education here in the Evergreen State. Well worth checking out, and kudos to them for creating a good blog to accompany their already pretty darn good website!

Read more here, if any.

We pay our subs $86 a day.

From Pittsburgh:

Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill will have a new principal Monday -- its third one this school year.

The Pittsburgh school board on Wednesday tapped Bernard Komoroski, a retired district teacher and administrator, to run Allderdice through July 31. He will be paid $600 a day.

That means that if there's 50 days left in the school year, he stands to pocket a cool $30,000. Not bad for part-time work.

Read more here, if any.

Ouch.

How's this for accountability? From the Chicago Tribune:

The Chicago Public Schools system is proposing a new plan to help "deficient" principals, who will get about a year to improve their performance before facing the ax.

On Wednesday, the Board of Education is set to approve the policy, which creates a system of "support and remediation" for contract principals, who rarely are threatened with dismissal for performance because it is costly to break their four-year contracts.

..........

Of the 18 principals disciplined in 2005-06, three were fired for performance reasons and one retired. Ten principals came off the list, and four still face possible sanctions this school year, district officials said. One new principal was placed on corrective action so far this year.

The principals currently facing corrective action are at Piccolo, Bass, Bond, Reed and Oglesby Elementary Schools, district officials said.

I'll acknowledge that they didn't name names, but what would you think if you opened your newspaper and saw that the principal of your school was a failure?

And it doesn't seem like it's a far step from naming the principals to naming failing teachers, either. That would be.....mind-boggling.

Read more here, if any.