Education Week - January 21, 2015 - Special Report - S4

S2 |
EDUCATION WEEK n
January 21, 2015
Shaping Strong School Leaders > www.edweek.org/go/principals
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
AN IMPOSSIBLE JOB?
The principal's job is often called the loneliest
in K-12 education, but it's just as fitting to
call it the toughest.
Hours are long. Demands come from every
direction: the central office, teachers, students,
parents, and the community. And no one else
in a school has the same responsibilities.
Managing buses, budgets, and buildings is
still central to the job, but the current generation
of principals-and the generation that
will succeed them-also must oversee colliding
rollouts of some of the most dramatic shifts in
public schooling in more than a decade: more
rigorous academic standards, new assessments,
and retooled teacher-evaluation systems.
That principals' time is so often strained by
day-to-day requirements of the job while they
are held responsible for the success of myriad
new initiatives makes their main mission-to
be their schools' instructional leaders and chief
architects of a positive school climate-all the
more challenging.
So who would want the job? And who is cut
out to do it successfully, year in and year out?
In this special report, we examine how some
educators and policymakers are tackling these
critical issues. In a small but growing number
of school districts and states, deliberate efforts
are under way to create and sustain a strong
corps of principals who can be the kind of political,
managerial, and instructional leaders the
profession now demands.
We start in Denver, where district leaders
over time have been building and refining a
"principal pipeline," starting with specific preparation
requirements for aspiring school leaders
and ending with proactive succession planning
for when vacancies occur. In Maryland, state
education officials have undertaken an obvious
though rarely used strategy: tapping districts'
most promising assistant principals and preparing
them through coaching and peer support
to take the helm of schools.
Professional development for school leaders-especially
for those who are midcareer
principals or veterans-remains perennially
overshadowed by the need for ongoing teacher
training. That situation persists despite a
growing body of research showing that principals
who receive high-quality on-the-job career
development are more likely to stay on the job.
The role of principal supervisors-the people
who manage principals and have typically
been charged with enforcing rules and regulations-is
undergoing a major makeover,
meanwhile, in a handful of districts where
leaders see that job as an important piece of
their overall strategy to support principals
and improve student achievement.
The kipp charter school network puts its aspiring
principals through a yearlong training
fellowship alongside their peers-a model it
has created to help address high burnout rates
and turnover in its school leadership.
Finally, we look at how teacher-leaders
remain a powerful yet vastly underutilized
tool for spreading the complex and competing
demands on principals across a team of educators
in school buildings. n
-Lesli A. Maxwell
Executive Project Editor
PRESIDENT
& EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Virginia B. Edwards
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Gregory Chronister
EXECUTIVE PROJECT EDITOR
Lesli A. Maxwell
LEAD WRITER
Denisa R. Superville
STAFF WRITERS
Corey Mitchell
Arianna Prothero
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Laura Baker
ART DIRECTOR
Gina Tomko
PROJECT LEAD DESIGNER
Sumita Bannerjee
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Charles Borst
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Swikar Patel
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
Jo Arnone
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
COORDINATOR
Kevin Kemp
ASSOCIATE ADVERTISING
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Dana Gittings
ADVERTISING:
For information about print and online
advertising in future special reports,
please contact Associate Publisher
Sean Herdman at sherdman@epe.org
or (301) 280-3126.
Copyright © 2015 by Editorial Projects in Education Inc. All rights reserved. No part of
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Education Week - January 21, 2015 - Special Report

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