Editorials
It's obvious there is no secret formula for a successful school, or every school would be one. But after decades of education reform, we do know one crucial component: a smart, strong, savvy principal.
You don't find an educator like that - nobody is born with all those skills - you build one.
It's funny how revolutionary that simple thought is in the world of education. Decades ago, nobody gave much thought to building skills and knowledge into the principal. If you were hired as a principal, you were given the keys to the building, were the boss of it and had the answers.
Now schools of education are more concerned that beginning principals start with good questions. What does the data say about how students are performing in this school? How does an individual teacher adjust his teaching to different learning styles? Does the schedule and the physical arrangement promote learning or inhibit it?
Those questions differ greatly from 'How many detentions do we give for smoking in the bathroom?' For today's principal, student achievement - not discipline or managing a building - is Job One.
But to prepare principals for that truly dramatic shift in focus, colleges of education have had to keep up. Research by the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the Wallace Foundation zeroes in on effective principal preparation programs.
The good ones - and we've got a number locally - teach principals to recognize and promote successful teaching and learning, use data to improve instruction and lead change in a collaborative way. Simply put, they go straight into the heads of students. In the University of Cincinnati's educational leadership program, principal candidates learn how the young brain works and what kind of physical environments promote learning. "They learn," said department chair Kent Seidel, "how to put student learning at the center of everything."
But successful principals not only need more information, they need to be able to put it together and apply it to problems, which is what they'll be doing for the majority of their day. Xavier University uses former principals as faculty members to emphasize real-life experiences and applications. "I tell prospective principals it's about a way of thinking, 'What would I do if. . . ?'" said Jim Boothe, chair of XU's education department.
The College of Mount St. Joseph will begin its principal certification program next year, incorporating two nationally-recognized approaches in its requirements. It will require candidates to undertake an internship - along with mentoring, a key to grooming young principals - and it will divide their time among public schools, private schools and a small business owner. It's a brilliant combination of academic training and practical management skills.
Building better schools requires building better principals - challenging and truly essential work that colleges of education must be engaged in.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060514/EDIT01/605140343/-1/all
posted by AcrosticGuy @ 12:40 PM
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