The average salary for high-school principals in the United States this school year topped $60,000 for the first time, but their annual pay increase is the lowest in the past decade, according to a survey by the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
The average salary this year is $61,768, a 4.5 percent increase from last school year, the survey shows. In past years, increases have been well above the Consumer Price Index, said Paul W. Hersey, the association’s director of professional assistance. This year, raises were dose to the rise in the index, which was 4.2 percent.
Junior-high-school principals average $57,504, and elementary-school principals $53,856, the survey said.
For the sixth consecutive year, principals in the Far West are earning more than their colleagues in other areas. The lowest salaries paid are in the Southeast.
States’ “growing acceptance” of the need to involve ramifies in all levels of children’s schooling has translated into a wide range of programs that “help schools create structures that are welcoming and supportive of all ramifies,” a new study shows.
The report, prepared by the Council of Chief State School Officers’ Resource Center on Educational Equity, presents case studies of four states that have made family and community involvement “central to the success of the states’ school-reform and restructuring efforts.”
It describes how Alabama is using community education to educate families and link them with services, and how Minnesota’s Early Childhood and Family Education program combines early-childhood and parenting education and support services at 300 community sites statewide.
It details how trained parent educators work with the parents of at-risk children in their homes and neighborhoods in Florida’s First Start Program and how the state is promoting “full-service schools” that offer health, education, and other services. It also catalogs California’s efforts to ensure schools design programs that offer “multiple avenues of family involvement.”
“These policies and laws represent wedges of opportunity for parents to become active players in determining the quality of the education” their children get, the report says.
Copies of “Families in Schools: State Strategies and Policies to Improve Family Involvement in Education,” are available for $5 each by writing to Ron Bisaillon, Council of Chief State School Officers, 1 Massachussetts Ave., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20001.
