The Principle of Principals

It’s hardly likely that only two percent of principals in Michigan are ineffective, as Dave Murray’s headline would have it.. Educational outcomes alone suggest the number is higher. Instead we are treated to what can best be described as a Lake Woebegone effect, where everyone is above average, or as Muskegon superintendent Jon Felske put it, “playing it safe.”

However, the numbers hide the real story here, namely that of the new role for principals generally. After all, principals have been the missing link when it comes to reform. We have gone off track in reform efforts in part because we keep looking at the year-to-year aspects without considering the larger picture. There are five areas where sound leadership can play an important role:

1. Continuity. The educational product is multi-year in nature. The principal provides the visible continuity of effort from year to year.
2. Team work.  Teaching itself is a team effort — one teacher passes along the class to another, the common success of teachers depends on everyone doing their jobs.  Each classroom may be a small kingdom, but each is linked. The principal coaches, helps facilitate the team.
3. Environment.  We know that school environments themselves can play a crucial role in creating the safe places where students can thrive. Again, the principal is the one who leads the teaching staff, the support team and parents in creating and maintaining that environment.
4. Connection. The principal is the face of the school with the parents. When Parents (single or intact) have a strong connection with the school, their children do better.
5. Face Time. And finally, as a matter of gearing, the leadership team in a school can help the building deal with other institutional and community stakeholders; they’re the face.

Leadership is critical for all these tasks. The principal is not simply an administrator — in the best schools in fact, you may even have a split leadership: one for operations (academic leadership, team coaching and the like), and one for the executive functions (i.e. dealing with the community, the stakeholders, the district administration).

If we are to have strong principals, we will need to have better development programs, and at the least, some sort of standard judging template to help them fulfill their critical function. It also turns attention to the role of our graduate programs in educational leadership. This is perhaps an opportunity.

 

Cross posted at Written and Noted.

Filed under: Education Policy, Horace Mann, Michigan, Dave Murray, Jon Felske, MLive, Muskegon, principals

The Man who Can’t Get Love

That would be our own, Justin Amash.

First, it was Right to Life denying him the endorsement.

“Amash’s pro-life voting record is the seventh worst of all House Republicans,” Douglas Johnson, legislative director for national group, told the Christian Post last month. “With such a record, he is unlikely to rally pro-life support to his new flag – a flag that seems designed mostly to cover his backside back home.”

Well, maybe. Then again, it’s not like there is any backside at home to cover (where are those primary opponents?). And the reality of Rep. Amash’s position is clear, he may be principled, but when it comes to life issues, those principles are pretty striking:

Amash’s stance is that abortions should never be performed and he doesn’t believe in the exceptions for rape and incest to which many subscribe.

That clears it up nicely, the problem with Right to Life is that they are too moderate, too pragmatic, while Amash goes absolutist.

Interestingly, something like that same criticism emerges at The Weekly Standard. Michael Warren launches a snark on the young congressman, but the quotes get to the heart of the difference between Amash and the Regular Republican Party:

House Republicans call him the “black sheep” of the conference, and Amash does seem to have an unscratchable itch to buck his own party. Take a recent bill designed to restore the flow of water to California’s Central Valley. A court ruling in 2009 halted the flow under the Endangered Species Act—the irrigation system supposedly harmed a species of smelt. Ten moderate Democrats joined 236 Republicans to give the drought-ridden Central Valley access to its water supply, with Amash the only Republican opposed. There’s no explanation for this vote on his Facebook page.

“He is a well-intentioned guy with very different goals than most people up here,” said one House Republican aide. “He’s not interested in governing.”

At the end of the day, the itch to go his own way, this absolutism is a danger. It’s easy as the Hotspur heir apparent to Ron Paul to start letting that adulation seize his attention. When your audience is a bunch of cranky libertarians, it becomes all too easy to forget back home. That’s the danger to the local GOP as well. A congressman more in love with principle than pragmatics loses clout in Washington. “Doesn’t play nice with others,” is how Tea Party conservative Rep. Renee Ellmers puts it. And without visibility in Washington, local initiatives simply go under supported.

The longer the GOP persists, the more the case for a moderate Democrat increases. At least that person would build connections.

Filed under: Elections, Republican Folly, Justin Amash, MLive, Renee Ellmers, Right to Life, Ron Paul, Weekly Standard