Principals must be better leaders, educators state
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/231548/
Three of Arkansas’ past and present education chiefs said Wednesday that the role of a school principal must evolve from building manager to instructional leader if student achievement is to continue to climb.
Ray Simon, the U. S. deputy secretary of education, and Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, joined Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock to introduce the Arkansas Smart Leadership initiative to nearly 1, 000 principals, superintendents and other district administrators.
The Arkansas Smart Leadership initiative is the latest in a series of statewide professional-development programs that began in 1998 with Smart Start, which focused on helping teachers improve reading and math achievement among students in kindergarten through fourth grades.
Smart Step followed with its emphasis on the middle-school grades and then Next Step for Arkansas’ Future, which focused on the high school grades. Next Step has been renamed Smart Future. All of the training efforts fall under the umbrella of Smart Arkansas.
“We have to pay more than lip service to the fact that the principal is the instructional leader of the school,” Simon told the Arkansas educators. “If that person doesn’t have time to deal with instruction, you don’t have an instructional leader, you have a buildings and grounds manager.”
The average school principal spends less than 30 percent of his time on instructional issues, added Simon, a native of Conway who was director of the Arkansas Department of Education from 1997-2003.
To change that, it may require school districts to allocate resources to provide management assistance in a school. Teachers in the nation’s effective schools, he said, give their principals credit for their success, saying that school leaders can be found in the classrooms observing, coaching and evaluating.
“We need to rethink our preparation programs, we need to think about stronger professional support for principals, and we need to think about what kinds of rewards and incentives are in place or are not in place for the leaders in our schools,” said Wilhoit, who was director of the Arkansas Department of Education from 1993-97.
After years of talking about it, there is increasing decentralization of authority in public education, Wilhoit said. That means schools are more autonomous than in the past, which means more authority rests with principals and teachers. They must be clear about their roles and responsibilities. He urged that principals have more of a say on how time is used in schools and more ability to focus on “best practices” to raise student achievement.
Principals must be able to recognize good teaching and know what to do when a teacher isn’t working effectively, he said. They must be able to use data effectively in decision-making, and they must be more strategic in their use of human and financial resources.
“Principals are on the hot seat,” Wilhoit also said. “They are running the enterprise right now,” while still reporting to the central office or the superintendent.
James, a former superintendent in Arkansas and Kentucky who succeeded Simon as the head of the Arkansas Department of Education, spelled out additional challenges to principals. Those include pulling together the different generations of teachers in a school — baby boomers, gen-Xers and Millennials — who bring different skills and mind-sets to their work.
Principals and assistant principals also will have to be able to tap teachers to form leadership teams within schools, he said. That will help keep effective teachers working in classrooms while also allowing them to have some leadership roles and improved income. Seventy cents of every tax dollar paid in Arkansas goes to general and higher education. As a result of that state commitment, accountability for improved student achievement is only going to increase for educators, James said.
“Superintendents will have to be able to let go and [be ] trusting of people they hire for key leadership positions and hold them accountable for getting it done,” he said. “That takes creativity, that takes innovation and that takes risk. At the end of the day, the superintendent is accountable for everything that goes on in the district. The key is hiring quality, effective people who can get the job done when given resources and professional development opportunities.”
James called on higher-education institutions to offer leadership training programs of high caliber so their graduates can hit the ground running in the schools.
Wanda Ruffins, who is moving into a job as a principal of Little Rock’s Forest Heights Middle School after many years as an elementary school leader, said during a break in the conference that she welcomed the vision espoused at the session.
“I’ve been taking notes,” Ruffins said.
“I have the perfect opportunity to go in and try to structure my staff so that it affords me of the opportunity to be the instructional leader I need to be,” she said.