May 31: Last day to save $75 on registration for 2012 Annual Conference in Boston More Info June 30: Board of Trustees nomination deadline More Info July 22-25: 2012 Summer Conference in Denver More Info

High standards for principals bolster school performance

By Dennis Sparks
RESULTS - December 1998

One of the most useful and cost-effective strategies for raising student learning is engaging principals in sustained standards-based professional study. Improvements in principals' performance are multiplied many times over through their affect on school culture, structure, and instructional programs. Designed properly to encourage principals to gain experience as instructional leaders and reflect on what they learn, these efforts to bolster principals' knowledge and skills can be the fulcrum for school improvement efforts.

A recent federal report underscores the fact that good schools require strong and stable leadership around achievement issues and that good principals are made, not born. The report, Effective Leaders for Today's Schools: Synthesis of a Policy Forum on Educational Leadership, concludes that principals have an "enormous influence over the environment in the school building, where the most meaningful actions take place." The real issue, the report says, "is how to structure leadership jobs and prepare people for them so that people who are proficient and committed, but not necessarily extraordinary, can succeed."

How should these proficient and committed but not necessarily extraordinary people be helped to do their important work? A critical starting point is adopting high standards for principals' performance. The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (under the aegis of the Council of Chief State School Officers) already has developed such model standards. These standards say principals:

• Must articulate and provide stewardship for a vision of learning shared by the school community;
• Must nurture and sustain a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth;
• Must manage the organization to promote an effective learning environment;
• Should know how to collaborate with families and community members to mobilize community resources; and
• Should act with integrity and fairness to influence each schools larger political, social, and cultural context.

In some states, prospective principals must successfully complete performance-based assessment processes developed by the Educational Testing Service.

New forms of professional development are required to help principals acquire new skills and grow intellectually so they can meet these standards. This professional development should be based on a few core standards for what leaders should know and be able to do, take place in participants' own school or context, and put participants to work solving real problems, says the Effective Leaders report. It should use a network of peers, be controlled by participants, and provide research findings about good teaching and productive schools.

The report cites several examples of such professional development including New York City District 2's principals' support groups which address a single topic for a year, such as evaluating student work. The report also recognizes principals' networks in Boston in which participants collaborate in an important area, such as improving literacy in every school in the district. The report concludes that such professional development programs help "people learn leadership by actually leading ó and by having simultaneous opportunities to reflect on what they are doing, and to talk about the process with others."

School systems owe it to their communities to make certain that all principals meet high standards of performance and that they are engaged in sustained, serious study of the most effective ways to improve student learning. Standards for principal performance exist, and leading-edge professional development models for principals are available for adoption or adaptation. Now all that is required is the will to implement them.