What is a principal’s job?

Our Superintendant told a colleague of mine that a principal’s job is to turn a school around as quickly as possible. I couldn’t disagree more. I believe a principal’s job is to get it right even if it takes time.

A principal could easily cajole his staff into enduring toxic working conditions and at the same time insist they give their students high grades and friends if you think that is implausible think again as it’s happening all over the county now. With a wink and a nod teachers are being told if you write to many referrals you must have poor classroom management and aren’t a good teacher and if you give to many Ds and Fs, the problem is with you and you must not be a good teacher either. If you fail kids or write referrals these things will affect your evaluations and could determine if you are eligible for performance pay or if you keep your job or not. Then even if a teacher wanted to fail a kid because they warranted it, it has become nearly impossible to do. As a result kids are pushed along till they get to high school and then sadly there is nowhere else to push them to. Well since it only takes 5 credits to pass ninth grade we can push them along a little farther but then a wall is hit.

To turn things around quickly principals can also schedule more kids in advanced placement classes or specialized programs as those affect schools grades as well. Strangely it doesn’t matter if a kid finishes the program or passes the test or not. Then there is drop outs, kids teachers have never seen stay on rolls for nine week after nine weeks now days, it used to be after ten days a teacher could have them withdrawn. Now the process involves levels of entities and takes months.

Friends, education should be about learning and it should be rigorous and meaningful. After all learning you have to work hard and learning you can’t do whatever you want are two of the most important lessons any kid can learn, lessons we aren’t teaching any more, lessons we are getting wrong.

It’s time we slowed down and got things right and that not cajoling teachers and massaging numbers should be a principal’s number one job.