The Weekly Reader this week focuses on principals. Like the Chancellor, I believe that effective principals are the essential ingredient for successful schools, especially in urban settings. How often do you find a great urban school with a mediocre principal?
Last week’s Daily News featured an article about one of our Empowerment School principals, who described how she has been able to shift her time from paperwork and meetings to classrooms and instruction:
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/462658p-389267c.html
What does the DOE expect of principals? More and more, the job is defined as “instructional leadership.” Here’s a definition of instructional leadership, from our Leadership Academy’s website:
http://www.nycleadershipacademy.org/02_00_programs.html#insLeader
And to see what you can earn doing all that, here’s the salary schedule:
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/C8D5C14B-9667-4446-8B7F-FB2CDA47E812/0/PrincipalSalariesandLong.doc
New York principals and assistant principals are members of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. Jill S. Levy, the union president, announced this week that she was stepping down when her term ends on Jan. 31. The union website is below, if you’d like to take a look (remember that you can see almost all union contracts on the union websites, if you want to read them):
http://www.csa-nyc.org/
There is no shortage of scholarship and writing about principal leadership. On the basis of my own research and reading, I can sum it up in one sentence: Good principals effectively manage the school for learning. Good principals come with every type of background, personality and style, but what they all seem to have in common is the ability to develop and manage school people, structures, and processes for student achievement. The link below is to a description, from the Maryland state school improvement website, of “indicators for effective principal leadership.” I like it, especially the inclusion of “systems thinking.” In my view, in an environment as complex as a school, if you are not a systems thinker you are going to have significant trouble accomplishing big goals.
http://mdk12.org/process/leading/p_indicators.html
Why is it important for us at Court Street to understand principals’ jobs? Best answer in 50 words or less wins lunch with me, your choice, anywhere in Brooklyn Heights.