Performance, Process, and Interpersonal Relationships: Explaining Principals’ Perceptions of Principal Evaluation

Purpose: Multiple-measure principal evaluation systems have become commonplace in the past decade, but we do not know how principals perceive their evaluations under these regimes. This study analyzes how principals perceive evaluation in a state that was an early adopter of such a system. It describes how attitudes are explained by individual and contextual factors, performance ratings, and elements of the evaluation process. Research Methods: Using data from a statewide survey of Tennessee principals in three consecutive school years, we create an index of principal evaluation perceptions of evaluation, then employ regression analysis to predict principals’ attitudes with measures gleaned from survey and administrative data sources. Findings: High school and veteran principals have more negative views of their evaluations. Practice ratings from the principal’s supervisor, though not the overall evaluation score, are positively correlated with attitudes. Principals assigned ratings more often view evaluation more positively, even accounting for their rating, as do principals who have worked longer with their evaluator. We find no evidence that racial or gender matching between principals and raters leads to more positive perceptions, and in fact Black principals may perceive evaluation more negatively when their evaluator is Black. Implications: Our results suggest some directions for states and districts seeking to make evaluation more meaningful for principals. Principals appear to value both frequency of feedback and consistency in raters over time. These factors may be especially important for low-rated principals, veteran principals, and those in secondary schools, who may perceive less value from principal evaluation.

Leadership Preparation and the Career Paths of Black Principals

Leadership training and administrative experience are key components of sponsored mobility as the candidate’s participation in district- or school-sponsored training for aspiring school principals combined with the opportunity to avail of administrative experiences effectively constitute a pipeline to the principalship. The literature reveals that principals are the primary sponsor of teachers entering into the principalship pipeline. We conceptualize two of the above key areas (leadership training & administrative experience) as components of contest mobility and the other two (participation & opportunity) as components of sponsored mobility. Contest mobility encompasses academic credentialing and management experience and assumes every candidate has an equal chance and the same opportunity as any other candidate to contest for a school leadership position. These actions are not sponsored by the candidate’s district or school. In contrast, sponsored mobility encompasses the informal process used to facilitate transition to leadership for some teachers, but not for others. We use restricted data from the 2011 to 2012 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to discern whether there were differences between Black and White principals’ exogenous contest mobility and endogenous sponsored mobility prior to the attainment of their principalships.

Held Down and Held Back: Systematically Delayed Principal Promotions by Race and Gender

Recent scholarship highlights the many benefits of diversity among principals, including improved teacher retention and student outcomes. We use survival analysis to assess the probability and time to promotion for 4,689 assistant principals in Texas from 2001 to 2017. We find that race and gender are associated with the probability of promotion to school leadership. Holding education, experience, school level, and urbanicity constant, Black principals are least likely to be promoted and wait longer for promotion when compared to White assistant principals. Additionally, findings suggest that even though women have over a year more experience on average before being promoted to assistant principal, they are less likely to be promoted to high school principal, and when they are, it is after a longer assistant principalship.

Weathering the Storm

This chapter focuses on the school-level administrators responsible for translating school desegregation plans into a workable model for their particular students, teachers, and staff. It looks at how principals approached such issues as discipline, curriculum, extracurricular activities, and classroom assignments. A primary challenge for many principals working through school desegregation was that they were expected to be the internal change agents responsible for enacting court orders and Department of Health, Education and Welfare desegregation plans, yet their own authority to enact substantive change was often curtailed by the bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of educational decision making. The chapter then demonstrates how race was a determining factor in the principal selection process. School desegregation provided unprecedented opportunities for many white, male teachers and coaches to advance into administration early in their careers. At the same time, a disproportionate number of experienced black principals lost their administrative positions either through dismissals, demotions to assistant principal, or reassignment to bogus positions at the central office.

It Was a Wonder I Wasn’t Lynched

During the second half of the 1960s, Austin developed a complex relationship with the Black Power movement. During these years, he continued to fight for school integration and black political power. Austin worked closely with the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs, leading to the election of more black officials in Durham and throughout the state. When, in the midst of public school integration, white officials shut down many black schools and fired black principals and teachers, Austin publicized these injustices and backed lawsuits to protect black educators’ jobs. While he criticized the Black Panthers and other organizations that employed violent rhetoric and advocated black separatism, Austin championed the efforts of local activist Howard Fuller, who was considered a militant by many during that era. Austin also backed efforts by Fuller and other activists to combat poverty and ensure fair and decent housing for African Americans.

Teacher-principal race and teacher satisfaction over time, region

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to replicate prior findings on teacher-principal race congruence and teacher job satisfaction and extend the literature by investigating trends over time and if the relationship between race congruence and teacher job satisfaction differs by principal race and region. Design/methodology/approach The study sample comes from four waves of cross-sectional data, the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, administered between 2000 and 2012. The analysis is conducted using ordinary least squares and school-year fixed effects with a comprehensive set of covariates. Findings The relationship between race congruence and teacher job satisfaction is attenuating over time and is likely explained by the lower job satisfaction of white teachers who work for black principals. Some evidence indicates teacher-principal race congruence has greater salience in the Southern region of the country. Find evidence that teachers with race-congruent principals report more workplace support than their non-race congruent colleagues. Research limitations/implications Future studies should investigate why racial congruence has more salience in the Southern region of the country and for white teachers who work with black principals. At the same time, results indicate that teacher-principal race congruence might no longer be a determinant of teacher job satisfaction, although further studies should continue investigating this relationship. Originality/value Findings on the changing nature of the relationship between principal-teacher race congruence and teacher job satisfaction over time as well as the differing nature of race congruence in the Southern region of the country are both novel findings in the literature.

Black Power and Battles over Education

This chapter examines what were often multiracial battles over public education. In New York and Los Angeles, education reform movements evolved from existing school desegregation protest and antipoverty organizing and were shaped by the emergence of Black Power. Demanding “community control” of public schools, movement participants insisted upon the transfer of decision-making power away from white city officials to locally elected community school boards, as well as the need for black principals, teachers, and more culturally relevant curricula. In Atlanta, grassroots organizers focused on the need for busing to integrate the city's schools. Tracing the trajectory of education reform in each city from the mid-1950s forward, this chapter explores the different ways white politicians, institutions, and organizations supported, facilitated, absorbed, subverted, and defeated grassroots-led challenges to established white educational authority.