Dive Brief:
- Involving an entire school community — teachers, parents, curriculum supervisors, fellow principals, school board members and students — in the selection of a new principal is critical, according to a five-step hiring tip sheet from Parsippany-Troy Hills School District (N.J.) Superintendent Barbara Sargent, published by District Administration.
- Administrators first use a paper screen to evaluate resumes on a rubric, then conduct a screening interview that includes the outgoing principal and other top administrators. The third step is the interview panel made up of teachers, parents, other principals, students and board members who ask questions of the top six, or so, candidates. In a debrief, the panel members can reflect on who they’d eliminate from the candidates, and and finally the welcome, in which a selection is made and announced in a press release.
- The new principal is also invited on campus to meet the community. While Sargent made clear that the entire school should be involved in the selection of a principal, she also emphasized that the superintendent is “front and center” during the process, and must ultimately communicate his or her vision for leadership.
Dive Insight:
A 2012 study found that a new teacher's perception of how well the school principal works with teaching staff is the number one factor in determining that teacher's commitment to a school. As evidenced by this study and stated by Sargent, “there are fewer decisions more critical than the selection of new principals.”
While every school has different needs depending on the demographics they serve, there are still certain traits that seem be universally agreed upon. In 2011 New York Times columnist Michael Winerip published his list of what makes a good principal, which includes someone who had been a teacher, would protect teachers from “nonsense,” set their own high standards, loves and trusts the public schools where they work and leads by example.
When teachers were asked about their administrative pet peeves, some issues they raised included principals not being in the building, observations without feedback, no accountability for promises made to staff, extreme micro-management, excessive busy work, short notice on important decisions, frequent or constant changes to curriculum and passive aggressive belittling.