The Principalship

By Gerald N. Tirozzi

The saga of school reform continues into 2000 with changing curriculum and instruction strategies, teacher-improvement initiatives, standards implementation, accountability models, and more. Conspicuously absent from the reform agenda, however, is the important leadership role of the school principal.

How is it possible to improve a school without recognizing and respecting the role of its leader? School improvement takes place where the students are, within the school building. Distant policy gurus, corporate and business leaders, and various legislative bodies may promulgate educational policies and pontificate on their merits, but policies are meaningless without strong leadership to implement them in the school—the critical leverage point where teaching and learning happen.

Changing America's schools, reforming educational practice, and realizing student-achievement gains do not take place one classroom at a time. Teacher quality is important, but it is the collection of teachers working with a unified purpose that transforms a school. Academic excellence for students, with long-term, sustained improvement, must take place across grades and across academic disciplines. Reform strategists who concentrate only on improving teachers are captives of celebrating small "victory gardens" when the need is for an "amber waves of grain"...