The Making of a Principal

It is always constructive to start a conversation by finding common ground, something that the participants agree on. Let’s start with this. In K-12 education, Principals are really important. It would be very hard to find a successful school, public or private with an incompetent Principal.

Unfortunately, a large majority of Principals are woefully unprepared for the requirements of the job. Now, in order to make a statement like that, one has to be intimately aware of what those requirements are. It would help if they have experienced the demands, expectations, stresses, and day to day occurrences first hand.

I have.

Most of the people that criticize the nation’s schools have legitimate concerns. They are correct to demand improvement. They are correct to demand equality in funding, better teachers, and better student outcomes.

What they may not realize is the most direct, cost-efficient way of obtaining those results is by focusing on the proper training and selection of the Principals. Once those Principals are selected, it is very important that they are given the autonomy and authority to pursue the desired results. They should be highly rewarded for success, and held accountable for failure.

Most of today’s Principals were outstanding teachers. Unfortunately, the skill set required to be an outstanding teacher is woefully inadequate preparation for being a Principal. My experience as a teacher lasted only five years. Fortunately, I had other professional experiences before becoming a teacher that turned out to be perfect training for my years as a Principal.

My career began as an Administration Manager for the International Business Machines Corporation. IBM gave me excellent management training and experiences that I relied on extensively as a Principal. After thirteen years with IBM my expertise included inventory management, personnel management, accounts payable, budgets, contract administration, distributive leadership, facility management, public speaking, motivational strategies, performance planning, counseling, and evaluation. All of these things were essential skills that contributed to my success as a Principal. None of them were taught to me in the undergraduate or graduate schools of education that I attended.

My pre-Principal education did not end there. I left IBM to purchase a franchised business, and became acutely aware of the pressures of being the final decision-maker. Five years as a business owner and I became completely sensitive to the importance of payrolls, and the enormous effect that meeting it and getting it right has on employee loyalty and morale. The importance of bank accounts, balances, and general ledgers became clear. I also came to appreciate how critical relationships with the community and other businesses were to my ultimate success. Perhaps just as importantly, I learned what it was like to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the focus and stamina that requires, and the unending pressure of being ultimately responsible for everything. You don’t learn that as a teacher.

Five years as a teacher completed the preparation for me. Every successful Principal has to be expert in pedagogy, or the methods and practice of teaching. Additionally, a good teacher is aware of the importance of, and practices successful group dynamics, classroom management, parent relations, and educational ethics. Of course, education is ultimately about relationships, and the great teachers, the ones that become Principals excel at building and nurturing positive relationships with all of their stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the community.

The nine years that I spent as a high school Principal were highly successful by any measure. Test Scores? We improved our State Assessment scores in English by 253%, and our Algebra scores by 395%. Increased rigor? We increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement classes from 30 to 700. College and Career Readiness? For five consecutive years, 90% of seniors applied to four-year colleges, with a 70% acceptance rate. We were approved as an International Baccalaureate school. We were featured in a Harvard Business School case study, Forbes Magazine, and several times in the Washington Post. We were featured on both sides of the political spectrum, including the Center for American Progress and the Heritage Foundation. Deloitte named us “School of the Year” in the National Capitol Region in 2010-2011. The US Department of Education featured us on its “Doing What Works” web site. We opened a student-run branch of a local credit union on campus, and our students built a broadcast studio on campus as well. We convinced the State Senate to fund a press box for our football field, and persuaded the county government and board of education to fund and build a new auditorium for the school. We received three formal citations for excellence from the Maryland General Assembly, and two more from the Governor of the State. We also received a commendation from the County Government.

We also received an invitation for 50 of our teachers and students to visit the White House from Michelle Obama.

All of this occurred at a high school on the outskirts of Washington DC in which more than 65% of the students received free and/or reduced meals, the majority lived in single parent homes, a school in which many in the community had lost all hope.

I know that the immediate response to this will be “can this be duplicated”? My response is “I don’t know”. What I do know is that it is possible to re-think how Principals are trained and selected. I know that if I had taken only what I learned in school and as a teacher into my job as a Principal I would not have been as successful as I was. As a Principal, I needed every bit of the training and expertise I accumulated as a manager at one of the world’s great corporations and as an entrepreneur.

 More importantly, I had to insist on the authority and autonomy the job demands. I needed the courage to be different.

Every new Principal would benefit from receiving management training at one of America’s successful businesses. Our schools are living, breathing organisms, communities that a Principal is responsible for organizing, nurturing, educating and disciplining. Let’s invest in and then have the courage to trust our school’s leaders.