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January 2012- The Power Principal
Karen Noble, principal of Hillcrest Elementary School in Nederland ISD, traveled in November to a gathering in Washington D.C., where she accepted one of the highest honors a principal can receive: the Terrel H. Bell Award. The Bell award is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the Association of Middle Level Education and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. It recognizes exceptional school principals across the country. Noble was one of only seven principals in the United States to receive the award in 2011. Not coincidentally, Noble also accepted Hillcrest’s 2011 award as a National Blue Ribbon School at the same D.C. ceremony. Noble has been principal at Hillcrest for 19 years; for 17 consecutive years, Hillcrest has earned the Texas Education Agency’s “exemplary” rating. As the honors for Principal Noble and Hillcrest Elementary demonstrate, excellent principals and excellent schools go hand in hand. “You can’t have a great school without a great principal,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in announcing the winners of the 2011 Bell and Blue Ribbon awards. “It’s the principal who shapes the vision, sets the tone and targets the energy of the many people who run a school. It’s the principal who inspires, cajoles and models the excellence he or she knows the school can reach.” Every school day across Texas — and even when school isn’t in session — principals are shaping the vision and setting the tone. They’re also administrating, mentoring, disciplining and listening. Principals wear more hats than Lady Gaga does. Yet these days, one of the biggest and most prominent hats worn by principals is the one that involves meeting student achievement standards and empowering teachers. JoAnn Klinker, associate professor of educational leadership at Texas Tech University, says the principalship used to be considered solely a managerial position – hiring, firing, overseeing facilities, balancing budgets, disciplining students. Now, the principal must maintain a keen focus on student achievement, according to Klinker. This shift means today’s principalship is “a totally different ball game,” she says. Coaches, mentors and entrepreneurs Klinker says principals “are going back into the classroom to assist in improvement of instruction. Instruction has always been a complex tangle of science and art, and unraveling that tangle requires different skill sets than that of a manager. Principals have to be coaches, mentors and entrepreneurs who can motivate teachers working in a political climate of criticism.”
In 2008, Spiller intensified his quest to cultivate what he calls “teacher leaders” at Stults. “Ultimately, my goal was to build people up to take my place someday — to build leaders who will be equipped not only to lead Stults Road or some aspect of it, but also, when they leave Stults one day, to stand on their own and lead and build other people,” Spiller says. Spiller says the “teacher leader” move-ment has manifested on his campus in several ways. For example: • Teachers have formed teams to address campus concerns, one of which is student behavior. On this front, the teacher leaders set up a schoolwide discipline team that focused on positive and negative behaviors and then developed an approach to reward or discipline students without having to refer them to the principal’s office. • Teachers have fostered a family culture, with emphasis placed on commitment and dedication. That commitment and dedication are displayed in various manners, such as teachers and employees brightening and personalizing school hallways with decorations they purchased, or “an office clerk combing a little girl’s hair in the morning to make sure she has a good day,” Spiller says. The success at Stults Road Elementary has not gone unrecognized. The Richardson ISD elementary school was one of only two schools in Texas to receive the 2010 National Title I Distinguished Award. Furthermore, Stults has been deemed an “exemplary” school by the Texas Education Agency since 2006-2007. Before that, Stults was either “recognized” or “acceptable.” “Along the journey to success, I often remind those around me that we need to take the time to push back, slow down, look around and take stock of our success,” Spiller says. “The first step, of course, was to understand and appreciate that the journey is as important as the destination.”
Wehring’s school, B.F. Terry High School in Lamar CISD, is a 2011 MetLife Foundation/National Association of Secondary School Principals Breakthrough School. The Breakthrough program recognizes academic excellence in middle and high schools with a large population of students from low-income families. In 2010, Wehring was named one of Lamar CISD’s two principals of the year. Among the initiatives that have spurred success at Terry High School is the Ranger Success Center, an after-school program that provides one-on-one tutoring for students. Another effort contributing to the school’s achievement is campus-wide collaboration among English, math and science teachers in creating lesson plans. Academic improvements at Terry High have come against a backdrop of what Wehring says are escalating negative opinions about public schools and of increasing attention on accountability measurements and ratings. Although the measurements and ratings have been in place for many years, “the outcomes have become much more punitive and publicized,” Wehring says. In Texas communities small and large, TAKS scores and Texas Education Agency ratings for public schools are trumpeted, dissected and debated. Wehring has been in education administration for almost 13 years. She’s in her sixth year as principal of Terry High. Going forward, she says, school principals will have to be more like “cheerleaders” for their campuses and communities. Accidental politicians “I think principals will have to be more informed of political trends, both in the community as well as in the bigger political landscape. They’ll have to be willing to stand up for the good found in public education,” Wehring says. In today’s climate of slashed budgets and layoffs, however, principals newer to the game aren’t willing to stick around too long to see public schools through dark times. A study released in 2009 by The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education found that only about half of newly hired public school principals in Texas are staying on the job at least three years. The study examined school data from 1996 through 2008. Study co-author Ed Fuller, a researcher with the UT College of Education’s University Council for Educational Administration, said this when the findings were announced: “What we know about principal retention suggests that school leaders are crucial to the school improvement process and that they must stay in a school a number of consecutive years for the benefits of their leadership to be realized. Principal retention matters because teacher retention and qualifications are greater in schools where principals stay longer. Any school reform efforts are reliant on the principal creating a common school vision and staying in place to implement the level of reforms that are part of large-scale change.” Principal retention rates are heavily influenced by the level of student achievement during a principal’s first year of employment, with the lowest-achieving schools having the highest turnover of principals, the study showed. In a Capitol Hill briefing in March 2011, Christine DeVita, president of The Wallace Foundation, noted that a “great deal” of attention appropriately is being paid to the teaching profession, but excellent teachers can’t be hired without effective principals. More than a building manager DeVita also pointed out in the briefing that the main job of principals is not management of buildings, but promotion of teaching and learning. Leadership is second only to teaching among school-related factors in its power to raise student achievement, she said. “Although more people are recognizing the importance of principal leadership,” DeVita said, “we have not yet given it the careful, thoughtful attention it deserves. And we’re paying the price for our neglect — most especially in our lowest performing schools, where … it’s hard to find, attract and retain principals who can turn them around.” Wehring says the most difficult part of being a principal is the amount of time needed to do the job right. “Part of that time commitment is … that members of the school community expect the principal to be available 24-7. The principal is expected to be responsive to campus needs at all times,” Wehring says.
The long hours on the job paid off. During Parmer’s eight-year tenure there, Frazier launched new bilingual, literacy, writing and math programs, all while the school accommodated about 300 more students than it was meant to house. In 2010, Parmer was named Texas’ National Distinguished Principal. Leadership in the classroom In her time as a principal, Parmer says she witnessed a “dramatic shift” from personnel manager to instructional leader. She envisions the future of the principal’s role being one that promotes teacher and student creativity. Simultaneously, however, a principal must cope with micromanagement from the district, state and federal levels. That micromanagement accompanies budget constraints, standardized testing and other pressing issues. Parmer says it’s difficult to “overlook students’ reactions to the hell they face day in and day out.” “Student motivation is a constant uphill fight,” she says. “I know how to motivate them, but I am tied to a system that will not allow me to do what is necessary to truly motivate them for authentic engagement in real learning.” That system includes grading standards that are “very ambiguous and subjective,” Parmer says. “While teachers should always have input to rate the students in their abilities, I feel we should move to the most objective forms of assessment as possible, while honoring students’ preferences in proving they know the material, which is inherently subjective,” she says. “I realize the logistical nightmare this causes and the anxiety of teachers when faced with the question, ‘How do I grade them on this?’ We are really coming to the point where we need to have individualized education plans for every student.” Klinker, the professor from Texas Tech, says that as principals strive to motivate students and teachers, they’ll be working within flattened “hierarchical structures.” This restructuring will free them up to be specialists in instructional leadership, implementation leadership, managerial leadership and so on, she says. The biggest change Klinker foresees for school principals is their role in disciplining students. She says principals are moving away from the “deficit model” — which, according to the e-Learning Design Laboratory at the University of Kansas, focuses on the student as the major problem, without examining environmental or instructional influences. Administrators are realizing that the “one size fits all” approach to discipline isn’t working, she says. “In the future, we’re going to see principals who think for themselves in regard to student discipline and who see policy as a guideline that is mitigated by the situation and the individuals involved,” Klinker says. Whether serving as disciplinarian or cheerleader or coach, the principal of the 21st century has embraced the new role of educational leader, Pete Hall, author of “The First Year Principal,” wrote in an article published in 2005 by SEDL, an Austin-based education think tank. According to Hall, teachers are a principal’s most valuable assets, and they require and deserve more than management. Teachers need strong relationships, individual attention, consistent support, fair treatment and accurate feedback, he wrote. “Now, in the era of accountability, principals face challenges heretofore unseen. With schools facing sanctions for underperformance, with drastic changes in the education landscape of the country and with the future of our society riding on each educational decision, the school principal forges a path in uncharted territory,” Hill wrote. “There is nothing simple about the most important position in American education. The principal is arguably the single most influential individual in any given school.”
JOHN EGAN is a freelance writer in Austin. He is the former editor of the Austin Business Journal.
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Darwin Spiller has adopted the role of coach, mentor and entrepreneur as principal of Stults Road Elementary School in Richardson ISD. Spiller became principal of the school in 2002 after having been an assistant principal and teacher there since 1996.
Just like Spiller, Vera Wehring has achieved success at her school — success that has been measured, in large part, by student achievement.
Rhonda Parmer, who became an assistant superintendent in Dickinson ISD last year, said she regularly clocked 10-hour workdays while serving as principal of Frazier Elementary School in Pasadena ISD. About two or three times a month, those days stretched to 14 or 15 hours.