As Duties Grow, Principals Face Mounting Pressures

In Hollywood, the image of the effective principal was epitomized by Morgan Freeman's portrayal of hard-charging Joe Clark in the movie Lean on Me.

"If you do not succeed in life, I don't want you to blame your parents. I don't want you to blame the white man. I want you to blame yourselves!" Clark said in one memorable scene.

Today, everyone blames the principal. Principals are still expected to keep order, but their chief mission is to make sure student achievement climbs. This growth in responsibility comes as baby boomer principals are retiring in droves.

"The need to raise student achievement, the pressure and the accountability has never been higher," says Clarice Berry, President of the Chicago Principals and Administrator's Association.

Dick Flannery, a former principal and head of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, says that the principal shortage means that school districts can no longer wait for education doctorates to emerge from universities. They need to prime the pump. Schools have begun to train talent within their own districts, with new mentoring programs that turn out CEOs who can get results in difficult schools.

But a review two years ago by the American Enterprise Institute showed that some of those mentoring programs are flawed.

"What we found was a whole lot like what was being taught 20 or 30 years ago, which was very little attention to accountability, very little attention to figuring out how to select or motivate effective personnel," says Rick Hess, a resident scholar at the institute and director of education policy studies.

Some nonprofits are trying to fill the training gap. New York nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools trains leaders to turn around failing urban public schools. Founder Jon Schnur says that some of his principals are raising achievement, but only 20 percent of their schools are making dramatic gains.

Congress is offering to throw some money at the problem; a recent proposal includes bonuses of $15,000 for outstanding principals who transfer to challenging schools.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.