HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP

High school principal Leadership

High school principal Leadership

Introduction

The Performance Indicators for Effective Principal Leadership in Improving Student Achievement have been developed. The performance indicators are intended to provide clarity and specificity about the skills, beliefs, and knowledge a principal needs to demonstrate effective leadership in improving student achievement. We are sharing them in draft form in the hope that you will share your thoughts and ideas about these critical principal performance behaviors.

Analysis

Effective principals are strong educators, anchoring their work on central issues of learning and teaching and continuous school improvement. Principals must lead their school through the goal-setting process in which student achievement data is analyzed, improvement areas are identified and actions for change are initiated. This process involves working collaboratively with staff and school community to identify discrepancies between current and desired outcomes, to set and prioritize goals to help close the gap, to develop improvement and monitoring strategies aimed at accomplishing the goals, and to communicate goals and change efforts to the entire school community (Hall & Hord, 2006). Principals must also ensure that staff development needs are identified in alignment with school improvement priorities and that these needs are addressed with appropriate professional learning opportunities.

While the importance of principals to the quality of schools may seem obvious, in fact scholars have only recently begun to examine educational leadership. Studies on the topic suggest that in the past, principals were able to succeed, at least partially, by simply carrying out the directives of central administrators. But “management” by principals is no longer enough to meet today's educational challenges — instead principals must assume a greater leadership role (Drake et al, 1999).

According to Drake et al, (1999) a leader “envisions goals, sets standards, and communicates in such a way that all associated directly or indirectly knows where the school is going and what it means to the community. While managers rely on the authority given to them from above leaders seek to create a cooperative culture in which everyone has a responsibility to lead and to suggest changes when necessary. Still, since both managerial and leadership aspects must ultimately be integrated by the principal, it is important to understand the tensions between the two leadership forms (Drake et al, 1999).

Burns (1978) argues that there is a distinction between transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leaders take a more managerial approach; they get ...