Qualities of Effective Principals

James H. Stronge, Xianxuan Xu

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781416629955
• eBook ISBN: 9781416630326
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

What does it take to be a good school principal? No two principals work exactly the same way, but research shows that effective principals focus on a core set of factors critical to fostering success among all students.

In this second edition of Qualities of Effective Principals, James H. Stronge and Xianxuan Xu delineate these factors and show principals how to successfully balance the needs and priorities of their schools while continuously developing and refining their leadership skills. Throughout the book, the authors provide practical tools and extensive research that will help principals* Assess, exhibit, and harness instructional leadership to meet a school's goals.
* Foster and sustain an effective school climate for learning.
* Select, support, and retain high-quality teachers and staff.
* Manage school resources effectively and efficiently.
* Create, maintain, and strengthen internal and external community relationships.
* Define their role in student achievement.

This book also includes practical skills checklists, along with quality indicators and red flags for effective leadership. Qualities of Effective Principals, 2nd Edition, is an excellent resource for both experienced and new principals committed to developing and leading strong schools that help all students succeed.

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Part I

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What It Means to Be an Effective Principal

Focusing on what we know about effective principals, we attempt to capture what the best and most recent research tells us about the profile of an effective principal. Thus, we've summarized, in language as practical as possible, the findings about what good principals should know and be able to do. These eight chapters address the major qualities of principal effectiveness. Chapters 1 through 7 provide an extensive review of the key roles and responsibilities of building-level school administrators. Chapter 8 serves as a culmination of this part of the book by exploring the direct and indirect effects of effective principals on school improvement and student success.

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Chapter 1

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Instructional Leadership
Supporting Best Practice

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Beth entered the education profession as a middle school science teacher who wanted to make a difference in the lives of her students. After teaching for a number of years, she wanted to accomplish more than the work that she could do solely within her classroom and, thus, became a grade-level chair. Beth also worked on the district's science curriculum committee and then began taking classes at the university at night to earn her administration and supervision license. Beth was an outstanding teacher, and her first administrative position as the assistant principal for instruction seemed tailor-made for her strengths. Her instructional expertise and knowledge of curriculum provided her with a sound foundation for leading instructional efforts in her school. Beth's office walls looked like a strategic command center of data disaggregation and data tracking. She traveled through classrooms daily, observing instruction and student learning. Her observations helped her identify classroom needs and strengths. She collaborated regularly with grade-level teams and directly with teachers to monitor the needs of students and to determine strategies and resources that could better support students and teachers. And she continued to meet with students to talk about their education goals and progress. In essence, Beth is committed to making teaching and learning in her school the most positive experience it can be. And the most successful!

In the first quarter of the 21st century, a major emphasis in the educational arena has been on preparing our students with a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are critically important to success in today's world, particularly in collegiate programs and modern careers (Ark & Schneider, 2014). In the United States, national and state expectations require schools to ensure that all students achieve mastery of core curriculum and learning objectives. As a result, leading instructional efforts in a school has evolved into an even more important and primary role for school principals than in decades past. Principals must focus on teaching and learning—especially in terms of measurable student progress—to a greater degree than before.

Instructional leadership matters not only in addressing the challenges associated with national and state expectations but also, and even more important, in achieving longer-term aims for student career and life outcomes. Principals play a leading role in creating engaging opportunities for students to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to thrive in an information economy and in diverse communities. Schools constitute an open system that is strongly influenced by their environment. Essentially, schools are a microcosm of their communities. The global/local economy and society in the 21st century require younger generations not only to achieve academic success, career preparation, or civic engagement but also to achieve a combination of all of these.

Consequently, today's principals concentrate on building a vision for their schools; establishing learning communities; and ensuring the quality of curriculum, instruction, and assessment that are implemented in the school building with an eye on what is as well as what changes may come. Among other responsibilities, accomplishing these essential school improvement efforts requires gathering and analyzing data to determine needs and then monitoring instructional programs to determine if the identified needs are addressed. This chapter summarizes existing research related to instructional leadership and methods principals use to exhibit and harness that leadership to meet their school goals. In particular, we focus on the following key attributes:

• Building and sustaining a school vision.
• Monitoring and supporting instruction.
• Coordinating and supervising curriculum.
• Leading a learning community.
• Using data to make instructional decisions.

Building and Sustaining a School Vision

If you are not sure where you want to go, how will you ever get there? Furthermore, how will you know when and how to take corrective action along the way? And how will you know when you've arrived at your destination? A successful principal must have a clear vision that shows how all components of a school will operate at some point in the future. Having a clear image of their schools helps principals avoid becoming consumed by the trivial requirements of their jobs. Fulfilling these multiple responsibilities well requires principals to possess an inner compass that consistently points them toward the future interests of the school, never losing sight of their schools' visions, missions, and goals.

Setting the Vision and Direction

Leadership is anchored in two core functions: providing direction and exercising influence (Huff et al., 2011; Louis et al., 2010). Principals are in a vital leadership position and serve as the catalyst for orchestrating change for continuous improvement across the school (González-Falcón, García-Rodríguez, Gomez-Hurtado, & Carrasco-Macías, 2020). They set direction for a compelling and attainable future, communicate that big picture clearly, and inspire—rather than dictate—others to take actions to achieve the vision.

In other words, principals chart a direction and influence others to stay the course to meet organizational goals. Principals also foster the success of all students by facilitating the development, communication, implementation, and evaluation of a shared vision of learning that reflects excellence. Further, effective principals demonstrate an ongoing concern with schoolwide vision, purpose, mission, and goals while constantly working to motivate constituents to accept and commit to school improvement and success. They strive to pull the system together in a synergic effort, rather than letting it operate as segmented, individual entities with missions and goals that may not support, and may even detract from, schoolwide concerns (Ninkovi´c & Flori´c, 2018).

Although this description sounds somewhat academic, it remains the reality for the day-to-day functioning of good principals. Moreover, these good principals know that vision counts. No vision means no success. Thus, effective principals embrace the fundamental importance of setting and sustaining a clear vision. This, then, translates into what they do every day in their role of primary instructional and learning leader for their schools, prioritizing student achievement and effective instructional practices as the foremost goals of the school.

Implementing the Vision and Getting Buy-In

It isn't just the principal's vision that counts. Rather, effective, forward-thinking principals understand the significance of building a shared vision and creating high-performance expectations (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Kearney & Herrington, 2010). They also understand that if a vision is to reach fruition, it must be appropriate, relevant, and compelling enough to be embraced by others within the school and extend to the total school community. It must become a shared vision (Huff et al., 2011; Kouzes & Posner, 2002). In this regard, principals identify, articulate, and endorse visions of exemplary instructional practices and model those beliefs in decision making (Ash & Hodge, 2016).

In plain language, effective principals put action behind their words. They communicate and implement the vision by identifying specific long-term and short-term goals. They also need to be knowledgeable about planning processes, and they must be able to monitor initiatives and take corrective action. They promote the use of data to monitor and evaluate the realization of the vision. Further, they steward the vision and fend off distractions when things get in the way of accomplishing priorities. In this regard, they stand as a barrier to keep out negative influences and to keep in a keen focus on what is most important—student success. Thus, they understand that when students succeed, schools succeed.

Several years back, Starratt (1995) visualized the school organization as an onion—a simile that still holds true today. At the core of this school onion are the beliefs, assumptions, goals, and myths that form the source of the vision. The outer layers are composed of policies (the basic rules governing organizational behavior), programs (the division of the school's work into departments, grade levels, and offices), organization (the distribution of resources through budgets, schedules, and staffing), and operation (the visible work of classroom teaching and learning). To enable the school to function as a holistic organization, principals reach to the core qualities of the organization since those attributes determine what the organization is, and then those core qualities become highly transferrable in virtually all layers of organizational functioning.

To accomplish this "whole onion" model, beginning with the core, principals nurture shared norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes, and they promote mutual caring and trust among all members of the school community (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003). They facilitate the members' accomplishment of shared goals but also address individual concerns. They must understand the importance of human aspects of school changes and reforms. Indeed, research shows that a principal's leadership is significantly related to the reduction of teacher resistance to change, in particular on the emotional and behavioral dimensions (Park & Jeong, 2013; Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2015a, 2015b). A strong belief in and acceptance of the organization's goals and values is an element of teachers' buy-in and motivation, which in turn influences their commitment to change (Lee & Min, 2017; van Veen, Sleegers, & van de Ven, 2005). Effective principals understand that if teachers don't see the value in proposed changes, they are less likely to make them happen. Therefore, effective schools have principals who build among the faculty and staff a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness to the vision. These issues of mission and values seem abstract, but in reality, there is little that is more practical and vital to real, lasting school improvement than this visioning role of the principal.

Stewarding the Vision

Successful principals understand that it is important to establish clear learning goals and garner schoolwide—and even communitywide—commitment to these goals. Principals of high-achieving schools consistently emphasize the development of a clear vision and goals for learning (Bryant, Ko, & Walker, 2018). They hold high expectations that teachers and students will meet these goals and hold themselves accountable for the school's success. Effective principals also provide emotional support for teachers and are viewed as possessing the ability to foster positive interpersonal relationships. They protect instructional time, including in practical ways, such as by limiting loudspeaker announcements and scheduling building maintenance to minimize disruptions. They ensure that student progress is monitored through the regular aggregation and disaggregation of student performance data that are directly related to the school's mission and goals. Additionally, principals of high-achieving schools are confident that they will accomplish their school's vision and goals despite challenges and setbacks; thus, they lead by example and build the school's collective efficacy (Goddard, Goddard, Sook Kim, & Miller, 2015; Versland & Erickson, 2017).

When milestone achievements are reached, those results are celebrated. When students succeed, everyone succeeds! Following is a simple illustration of vigilance in stewarding the vision and a determined focus on what matters most:

If student success truly is the focus in an elementary school—for example, helping 1st graders learn to read adeptly, developing enjoyment of reading for all students, building a solid foundation for understanding math, developing healthy habits for exercise—then anything that interferes with achieving these goals needs to be eliminated.

What if the maintenance department is mowing the grass directly outside the 4th grade classroom when students are taking an important exam and it's distracting the students? You intervene quickly and find a way to reschedule the lawn mowing. What if there are so many PA announcements that four to six minutes of actual class time were lost every morning? You cut down the announcements to a bare minimum and find other ways to communicate any needed information. What if a series of walk-through observations finds that a regular practice in 5th grade is to stop teaching about five minutes before the end of class and have students pack up and "talk quietly"? You discuss this matter with the involved teachers and get them to refocus their time to take advantage of all the teachable minutes.

These are pretty simplistic examples, but these "what ifs" happen every day in every school and, in some ways, are simply part of the ebb and flow of schooling. However, if student success really is the focus, the best school leaders know that every opportunity lost is one that can't be regained, and every opportunity taken is one more small step toward excellence for each classroom and each student. Thus, in the best schools—the most successful schools and classrooms—effective principals make it an overriding habit to make the school a good place to be and a good place to learn. They know that converting strategic plans, missions, goals, and so forth is accomplished by converting concepts into real practices, one step at a time. This is vigilance and focus.

Key Research Findings

• Visionary principals have a basic sense of self-confidence and optimism that they personally can have a positive impact on people, events, and organizational achievements (Hallinger, Hosseingholizadeh, Hashemi, & Kouhsari, 2018).
• Setting direction through development of an inspirational shared vision and academic mission is a core practice in successful school leadership (Sun & Leithwood, 2015a).
• In one influential study, schools categorized as high performing (beyond what their socioeconomic composition predicted) were all led by principals who clearly articulated vision, mission, and goals that emanated from personal beliefs about student learning. Conversely, schools that achieved lower than what their socioeconomic standing indicated had principals who did not clearly identify personal beliefs or vision for the school (Mombourquette, 2017).
• High-achieving schools have principals who communicate a vision that is guided by an educational philosophy based on sound research, personal experience, and reflection (Gulcan, 2012; Mombourquette, 2017; Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008).
• Effective principals act as change agents; they capitalize on external accountability and reform demands to translate them into enabling conditions—such as through shaping the school's discourse around achievement and sharply defining goals of student learning (Ganon-Shilon & Schechter, 2019; Shaked & Schechter, 2017).
• Effective principals are change agents and institutional entrepreneurs who initiate and lead meaningful innovations in their organizational and pedagogical environments. They actively and willingly challenge the status quo (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003; Yemini, Addi-Raccah, & Katarivas, 2015).
• Principals of high-achieving schools communicate the school's priorities to all stakeholders, and they ensure an alignment among the school's vision, mission, and strategic plan (Ash & Hodge, 2016; Mombourquette, 2017).

Transformational Leadership Versus Instructional Leadership

In the principalshi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part I. What It Means to Be an Effective Principal
• Part II. Principal Effectiveness: Tools You Can Use
• References
• About the Authors
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright