When Andrew Rebello was hired to lead a high school in 2020, he had a single round of interviews before he got the job. But as the now-assistant superintendent prepped to hire a new principal, he knew the process had to be different.
“It’s just a more intense process now,” Rebello said. “Right behind the teacher in the classroom, the next most important person is the principal for student outcomes. I felt pressure to get it right.”
Rebello involved teachers, parents, and students in his search for a new school leader at Bristol-Plymouth Technical High School in Taunton, Mass. Rebello and his superintendent may have had the final word on who was hired, but they gathered input from others at every stage.
Parent participation was crucial because schools have been under more scrutiny since the pandemic, and families have demanded better “two-way communication,” he said.
“You’re really looking for someone who can build trust,” said Rebello.
Principals need a vast skill set to lead their schools: They have to know how to manage a budget, support teachers, drive instructional changes, and respond to the growing political and financial challenges that have beset public education.
Hiring for this key position, then, requires a process that can look beyond a candidate’s credentials to how they’re going to respond in different situations, said Henry Tran, the director of the Talent Centered Education Leadership Initiative at the University of South Carolina.
Tran and his colleagues, who train aspiring school leaders and novice principals, regularly meet with superintendents from across the state to find out what they expect from a new crop of principals amid ever-changing challenges facing schools.
“Districts now are looking for somebody who can adapt to that change, instead of just following a script of what it means to be a good principal,” said Tran. “Book banning might be the issue now. But that could change next year. How are you going to change?”
District leaders make the decision, but the hiring process starts in schools
Joe Craig, the superintendent of Fairfield Independent school district in Texas, has blended two approaches to hire a principal for Fairfield Junior High School, a position that opened because the current principal is retiring at the end of school year. This is Craig’s first hire in his two-year stint as superintendent.
The first step in his process was to survey the staff to ask who wanted to be part of the hiring committee.
“I was looking for [volunteers from] several categories: core teachers, elective teachers, special education teachers, and non-teaching staff,” Craig said. “Everyone has a slightly different perspective” about the principal role.
Once the volunteers had expressed interest, Craig set up a ballot for staff to vote on who would serve on the committee.
Craig also surveyed staff on the type of skills and level of experience they wanted to see in their new principal. One preference that emerged was that the candidate should have experience leading a middle school, either as a principal or an assistant principal.
“It’s a unique age for kids. It’s an awkward age. They’re going through puberty and just starting to become individuals. Because of that, it takes a person who really wants to be with this group of kids at that age level,” Craig added.
The hiring committee created a profile and a list of interview questions based off the character traits and qualities identified by the staff survey. The candidate needs good communication and organization skills and be able to hold students accountable for their behavior in a firm but fair manner, said Craig.
So far, 17 candidates have applied for the principal position. The teacher committee will interview them and send a short list of two or three names to Craig, who will make the final selection based on his own interviews.
Simulations and role-plays feature in present-day hiring interviews
Before a teacher is hired, they can demonstrate their skills by guest-teaching a class.
There is no equivalent in the principal hiring process, Rebello said. The closest test would be to throw a bunch of different situations to a principal candidate and ask how they’d react to them.
Tran, the South Carolina professor, said more districts are now applying this test for principal candidates, to check their mastery over skills like using data to make informed decisions.
“Every conversation we have with district representatives and superintendents let us know that school leaders need to be able to read data, and you see this reflected in the school district hiring process,” said Tran.
Some districts now include a data set from the school as part of the hiring process, reflecting an ongoing challenge in the school, like high discipline or absenteeism rates. Tran said districts will ask candidates to respond to this data: “In your first 90 days, as a school leader, what would you do to address these problems?”
Districts are interested in details like whether the candidate only looks at the hard numbers—test scores, attendance, etc.—or asks for data from more qualitative sources, like student surveys, to determine the school climate or climate.
Rebello said he implemented something similar when hiring the new principal. The selection committee asked the candidate who was eventually hired what they would do if a student brought them a Snapchat photo of a weapon, geotagged to the school’s location.
The candidate’s response—that they’d lock down the school to ensure student safety—aligned with the district’s “best practices,” Rebello said.
Beyond basics, schools need specific types of leaders
Rebello said his district wasn’t prescriptive about how many years of teaching or leadership experience a candidate needed, if they were “passionate” about the role.
The only real non-negotiable was a strong background in instructional leadership, with a preference for candidates who had worked in a vocational school setting.
“We were looking for someone who could define what highly effective teaching and learning looks like,” said Rebello.
To gauge this, he asked situation-based questions, like: “You walk into a class. You have students with their heads down. You have a teacher who’s mostly standing and delivering. Talk me through the conversation you would have with this teacher.”
In Fairfield, the school staff want someone with administrative experience at the middle school level. But Craig said they also need someone with the right mindset to lead a school located in a remote and small town.
The 1,500-student school district lies 90 miles south of Dallas and 120 miles north of Houston. Unlike other smaller communities that may be adjacent to a larger city, Fairfield is a “stand-alone” district. Principal candidates should do their homework on the school, and the community it’s located in, before they interview, Craig said.
“Most likely the person is going to have to move here. They need to look at what kind of housing is available, what type of jobs are available if their spouse is not in education,” Craig said. “Those are just natural challenges for our type of district.”
