Principals’ New Principles

Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Roy Romer had a surprising, fresh-air message for the city’s 850 school principals the other day: He wants them to walk around inside their schools.

For anyone who might recall being apprehended by name in a school hall and, dread of all possible dreads, sent to the all-knowing principal’s office for punishment, the immediate response is: You mean principals don’t patrol nowadays? Apparently not. Apparently schools and their acronym-laden bureaucracies (ALBs) have gotten so big that principals no longer feel compelled or able to mingle, listen, talk, kid, oversee staff and students--in short, to preside like the managers they are. According to Romer, most principals are career administrators with little instructional experience; apparently they have become so specialized they are too busy shuffling papers. They must ensure legal compliances, assign staff, address angry parents. As one result, teachers have been left alone on their instructional icebergs to do their best, which, judging by test scores and society’s customer response, could stand significant improvement.

Few institutions reflect the surrounding society better or faster than schools. In recent times schools have often been asked to do what parents used to do, a very big job. Perhaps one revealing measure of urban education’s isolation from its mission and audience is that the head of the nation’s second-largest public school district in 2001 needs to tell his factory managers to get into their factories sometimes. Good idea, obviously. And if these principals don’t understand the many paths that skilled teachers can take to stimulate young minds, maybe it’s the principals who need some educating; what better place for principals to learn than within their own schools? It surely isn’t happening behind a desk.

Using a million-dollar consulting contract with the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Learning to monitor and teach a new districtwide system of principal classroom involvement, Romer has launched a major push to reconnect principals with the instructional efficiency, or lack thereof, inside their buildings. After all, any facility--factory or school--is judged not by how neatly the papers move but by the end product shipped out the door. Over the years parents and taxpayers have seen way too many “new education plans” (NEPs) rise and fall like fashionable hemlines to pronounce anything a panacea. But to the extent that this detailed walkabout reform effort actually re-energizes and empowers the executive engines of individual schools to produce better student products, we are all for it (WAAFI).

If this doesn’t work over time, then maybe it’s the superintendent who should be sent to the principal’s office for punishment.