transforming school LEADERSHIP

Leadership, Jan, 2001 by Kent Peterson, Carolyn Kelley

In the coming years, districts will have the opportunity to recruit and train thousands of outstanding new principals -- school leaders who will have a major impact on the success of students in the new millennium.

U.S. schools are facing one of the most massive transformations of leadership in a century. By some estimates, more than half of all principals are expected to retire in the next five years. So schools and districts will have the unique opportunity and the significant challenge of recruiting, selecting, training and motivating an entirely new group of leaders. This turnover of administrators, though, is occurring at a time of decreasing applications and concerns about the difficulties of the job.

How can districts accomplish this formidable task -- maintaining and enhancing quality while facing a shortage of applicants? This article examines some of the reasons for the shortage, including the challenging work lives of principals. Then we turn to several approaches districts and states are taking to address the shortage, develop more skilled and knowledgeable principals and provide an ongoing pool of qualified candidates for positions in their schools.

There are no easy solutions and programs must fit the local context. But current practices provide a set of possibilities for California districts.

Replacing thousands of principals over the next five years with skilled, knowledgeable newcomers will not be easy, but it is a window of opportunity that will close quickly for districts. Once principals are selected, they may remain in their positions for a decade or more. Therefore, those who are hired will lead our schools in the new millennium and provide the foundation for their success or failure. Making careful selections now and providing significant professional development and support will be key to having successful leaders in our schools.

Complexities of principals' work

Though principals have not been the primary focus of recent reform efforts, they are needed to lead instructional improvement, foster effective change efforts, lead the implementation of new standards, and are central to shaping strong, professional school cultures (Deal and Peterson, 1998). But the best principals do not lead alone. Without principals encouraging and supporting teacher leadership, collaborative leadership will die. One seldom finds an effective school that does not have an effective principal.

The work of principals is enormously complex and demanding at the same time it is exciting and energizing. Mintzberg (1973) noted that managers' work is characterized by brevity, variety and fragmentation. This is especially true for school leaders. Principals' daily work is characterized by hundreds of short tasks of enormous variety -- one minute talking with a teacher about materials, the next coping with a student issue, followed by another dozen questions, issues and problems to be solved. Their work is constantly interrupted by the continuous stream of issues that have to be addressed, reports that have to be completed and people who want a piece of the principal's time. Effective principals must be able to lead within these quickly paced days and hundreds of interactions (Peterson, 1998).

Principals have always needed a variety of knowledge and skills to carry out the many activities they are responsible for, including:

* identifying and articulating the school's mission,

* providing instructional leadership,

* managing and administering policies and procedures,

* developing budgets and coordinating resource use,

* organizing improvement efforts,

* supervising staff and assessing student learning,

* building effective parent involvement programs, and

* shaping positive school cultures.

But recently there have been some changes in principals' work.

Increased demands

The work of principals has always been complex, but changes in schools, communities and educational policy approaches have increased the demands on these leaders and required new skills and often an even bigger time commitment. Over the past 10 years, the expectations for principals and schools have changed considerably, and several new expectations have evolved.

Principals now face greater responsibility for working with diverse communities and parents. There is significantly more accountability for student learning. There is more pressure to bring educational reforms and new programs into classrooms. And despite these new demands, in some regions or districts there has been significant salary compression, with new principals who must attend night meetings and other activities making the same or less on a per diem basis than some teachers (Kelley and Peterson, 2000; Peterson, 1999).

While these changes have expanded the knowledge and skills needed by principals, they may also have decreased the available pool of candidates. Good principals are central to good schools. How can the challenges of attracting, training and retaining excellent school leaders be met? Some districts are using a number of approaches to both increasing the pool of qualified candidates and the skills and knowledge new hires bring to their work.