Teachers Plan Report Cards on Principals

When Los Angeles school district teachers pass out grades this year, it may be the principals who get report card jitters. For the first time, teachers will be given a chance to rate their leaders.

Begining this fall, the district’s largest teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, will have faculty members complete a 20-question evaluation form that rates a principal on everything from leadership qualities to personal relations skills.

The results of the twice-a-year evaluations will be stored in UTLA’s computer system. When a question arises about a principal’s performance, union officials can refer to the staff performance ratings, union leader Wayne Johnson said.

“Administrators must be held to the same level of professional accountability as teachers,” Johnson wrote in a UTLA newspaper column announcing the program. “A competent administrator should have nothing to fear from a fair evaluation of his professional behavior.”

When Johnson ran for the UTLA presidency in 1984, he vowed to work against the few principals that teachers had cited as being among the worst.

However, Johnson said the ratings will not be used as a vindictive weapon. Instead, the reports will be used to either substantiate or dismiss complaints from teachers.

“Now when we get a call from a teacher with a complaint about a principal, we don’t know if it is legitimate or if it is just someone who has a personal ax to grind,” Johnson said. “But when you have an entire faculty rating a principal, you’re probably going to get a pretty fair picture of what that principal is really like.