Principal Evaluation

I would like to echo my thanks to Scott for utilizing technology to bring together the excellent discussions that have and will happen on this blog. Having worked in education for over 35 years and served in almost every capacity known, I am amazed at the expectations we have of school leaders today. I was reminded of this recently while attending a state task force meeting that is drafting a new principal evaluation instument for North Carolina.

As a school superintendent, I know one of the most important tasks I perform is the selection of principals and even more important is the training and retention of principals. The development of an evaluation instrument in the past has been based on portfolios, goals, management by objective, and many other flavors of the year. In this most recent meeting, I finally began to see the move toward an evaluation of the system rather than the individual. In other words, has the school developed a system that supports high levels of student learning and how well has the principal led the school in that development. What was interesting in the conversation about the new evalutaion instrument was the requirement from the Governor's Office and the professional standards team that we include a form of 360 evaluation in the new instrument.

In North Carolina, we have had a Teacher Working Conditions survey since 2002. This survey is administered every two years. The most recent administration was 2006. Over 65% of the teachers in North Carolina responded to the survey. Results may be seen at www.northcarolinatwc.org. The Center for Teacher Quality has recently worked with a number of states to implement this survey. The results from this survey will probably be included in the principal evaluation process and principals will be expected to address empowerment, facilities, resources, and professional development needs identified in the survey.

The job of our committee was to develop an evaluation process that included the feedback from this survey and an analysis of the degree to which the leadership of the school has created a system that is learning centered. North Carolina has partnered with McREL and is looking at a crossover between the Balanced Leadership Profile that is based on the work of Marzano, Waters, and McNulty and a systems based review of seven categories of leadership.

I write this article to say that it was very apparent in the work of our committee that the job of principal has changed significantly in the past few years. Principals are no longer managers. Principals are much more than instructional leaders. Principals are required to have skills in developing high performing systems. Not only do principals need leadership sklills, they also need skills in developing strong strategic plans and deploying them. Principals need skills in dealing with a wide variety of stakeholders. Principals have to be data experts in mining, analyzing, and moving data from information to knowledge to action. Principals have to be well-trained in how to utilize teams of teachers to make decisions. Principals need to have training in process design and improvement. Finally, principals have to produce results with student populations that are increasingly more challenging. Now if they could only walk on water our new principal evaluation instrument could be a performance based instrument! Really - hats off to all the principals out there who are working under difficult conditions every day to meet the needs of students, staff, parents, and superintendents who do expect them to walk on water!

Comments

[Marion Ginopolis]

Terry, I was so intrigued by your post that I started following all the links and ended up spending over two hours reading the reports at the N.C. teacher working conditions survey site (http://www.northcarolinatwc.org) loooking at the data that has been accumulated and analyzed in the surveys. This is VERY powerful information that should be shared across the country. N.C. Governor Easley's quote tells it all...
“Armed with this data, North Carolina will better meet the needs of teachers, and in turn, our students, because teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.”
Getting the focus away from what I refer to as "tissue issues" (Is their hot coffee in the teacher's lounge?) to substantive assessment of issues like empowerment, support, decision making and professional development provides truly important information about the impact school leaders have on school improvement.
And, clearly indicated by the survey data and analysis, leadership does make a difference. (http://www.teachingquality.org/pdfs/twcindepth.pdf page 2)
• Leadership was the single greatest predictor of AYP status at the middle school level, more so than school size and teacher retention. For every one point increase on the WorkingConditions Survey results in the area of leadership, middle schools were 6.7 times more likely to achieve AYP.
• Leadership was a powerful predictor of whether or not a school had high student achievement at the high school level. High schools were 48 times more likely to be included in one of the top three performance designations for every one point increase on the leadership
domain average.
Thanks for sharing this valuable information.

[knobloch]

Have any of the principals out there used the online survey tool on Balanced Leadership Profile from MCREL?

Did the teachers find it relevant? Did you?

I am looking for a tool to use with my faculty this year.

Alan Knobloch