When you live in a school district where 64 percent of the students come from low-income homes and budgets have been squeezed to death, every official school communication has the potential to ruin your day.
So it went when I read a letter from my youngest son’s school informing us we’re getting a new principal next year. We got the letter a few weeks ago, but only now, in the last days of this academic year, has it become gut-wrenchingly real.
Our current principal is one of the best I’ve ever known. And though his move is cause for celebration (he’s being promoted), it’s a deeply painful loss to our neighborhood. Painful, but not surprising. Our school leaders come and go all the time.
When I was a kid, principals usually only ascended to the top job after working in the same school’s classrooms for decades. They’d climb the ladder from teacher to principal and then stick around in that role until retirement.
No more. Today, principals routinely step into the thorny spot between education and administration after only a few years in the classroom, though that’s not actually as bad as it sounds. Yes, the number of years a school leader spends walking in the shoes of classroom teachers is vital to his or her success. But these days, many educators start their careers with the specific goal of becoming a principal because the job is no longer merely about managing a staff or ensuring that the school buses run on time.
New principals today are younger, more diverse, have post-graduate degrees and training in sophisticated data-analysis techniques. The bulk of their instruction is in the art of “instructional leadership,” which basically means being able to implement programs to satisfy No Child Left Behind requirements to close the academic achievement gap, especially among minority, special education students and English-language learners.
The problem is that these principals tend not to stick around very long and, as opposed to the already familiar issue of teacher turnover, the study of their longevity and impact on schools is just in its infancy.
In my experience, even the marginally good principals get poached from one low-performing school in hopes of turning around another one. And if they’re not, they simply flame out.
According to “First-Year Principals in Urban School Districts,” a report recently published by the RAND Education Corp., over one-fifth of first-year principals will leave their schools after one or two years on the job.
The ones placed in a school that isn’t making adequate yearly progress (AYP) before their arrival are likelier to quit after one year than those who begin at start-up schools or schools that have already been meeting AYP. In their wake, student achievement tends to stall or decline in the following year.
Successful principals are likely to have had experience as an assistant principal and share the educational philosophies and culture of their new school. They thrive by hiring strong staff and working closely with them and with students and their parents.
But like so many other low-income schools, churn is our district’s standard mode.
