School Districts Must Create The Right Conditions for Great Principals to Excel

RCEd Commentary

At one time or another, many of us have seen a dynamic principal take charge of a school, improve instruction and ultimately elevate the achievement levels of the students. We know them when we see them, too: They walk the halls, know students by name, have a knack for building a team and use research to drive results. At times, they go to heroic lengths to make change happen in their school buildings.

Unfortunately, there are not enough principals like that working in every school in our country. Even worse, the amount of effort is exhausting and leads to burnout and attrition.

The Great Principals at Scale report released last week by the George W. Bush Institute and New Leaders found that districts need to tackle these issues in a systematic way. They need to be intentional about creating the right conditions that lead to great principals.

Here are a few conditions that the report identified:

Districts need a system of balanced autonomy -- too often, the central office uses a top-down approach to managing schools. This strategy denies principals the freedom to run their own campuses and own accountability for results. In turn, that makes it hard to groom and keep good leaders.

In contrast, districts that effectively select and develop leaders play a partnership role with campuses. Together, they are responsible for success or failure. Districts set the goals and mission, and principals must work within the confines of the larger district's goals and values. At the same time, principals have the discretion to meet them in a way that fits the needs of their schools.

That is part of being in a system of "balanced autonomy." The report found that condition as essential to developing and keeping good leaders.

You can see an example of balanced autonomy in the Denver school district. It has set a few goals and then put resources around them. For instance, the district has created a new principal evaluation system that is linked to the larger goal of having an effective teacher in every classroom.

Effective districts give principals the authority to build their own teams -- if districts want a principal to get the job done, they have to give them the freedom to hire, reassign or dismiss staff. Put another way, no capable leader will want to have the central office micromanage their staffs. They particularly will not want to stay around long if they have to select a team based upon such factors as collective bargaining agreements that prize seniority over results.

The report found that the lack of autonomy for principals is a major deterrent to developing school leaders. Fortunately, the Gwinnett County Public School system in suburban Atlanta has gone the other way. Its front office gives principals complete autonomy in hiring and firing school staff.

Districts need to both effectively manage and support principals -- reliable evaluation systems are certainly part of the way districts effectively manage school leaders. Quality reviews show principals where they are excelling and where they need help.

Yet effectively managing principals is much more than this. In the Dallas school district, Supt. Mike Miles has assigned managers to oversee about 10 to 12 schools, which is a significantly lower number than you find in many districts. The principal managers are in the schools regularly, consulting with the principals and reviewing data with them. Their job is not to do the principals' work for them, but to coach them towards success.

The Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida support principals in another important way. The district worked with the Disney Institute to train central office staffers in being service-oriented.

As an example, if a staff member doesn't know how to meet a request from a principal, he or she is trained to "own" the request. They don't throw the principal into the bowels of the bureaucracy. They work with the principal in helping find an answer.

Of course, no school district hits all these marks all the time. Creating the conditions that let principals excel is a major undertaking. That is why the Bush Institute and New Leaders have created a toolkit that allows districts to honestly assess their current conditions and to prioritize which conditions to begin working on.

Researchers as well as educators are still learning about the conditions that matter most, and we must keep working with experts and school districts to determine how to best support our great principals.