Educational Administration Rammer, R.A. "Call

Educational Administration Rammer, R.A. "Call to Action for Superintendents: Change the Way You Hire Principals." Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 101, No. 2; Within contemporary American public education, there are many variables that determine the nature and quality of educational instruction and institutional management. Undoubtedly, one of the most important is the school principal. Generally, school superintendents are in substantial agreement that good school principals correspond to high-quality educational institutions and that the opposite is also true.

Moreover, there is general agreement within the available literature on the specific qualities and attributes of principals that equate with superior performance and contribution to the school environment. However, there is no corresponding approach to hiring practices designed to identify prospective school principal candidates by virtue of those specific qualities and attributes associated with high-quality performance after appointment.

Purpose of Study The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine the specific factors, personal attributes, and skills that school superintendents consider relevant and important to the ability of school principles, and (2) to determine how school superintendents take those factors into consideration (if at all) during the actual school principal hiring practice. Methodology, Design, and Data Collection This study consisted of a Likert-type questionnaire developed from the available prior literature establishing twenty-one specific qualities and attributes of successful school principals.

That survey was distributed electronically to 370 public school superintendents in Wisconsin, out of a total number of 442. The study excluded superintendents from institutions with student populations above 5,000 and those with populations below 300, since superintendents at the largest schools are completely uninvolved in principal hiring decisions and superintendents at the smallest schools tend to serve as principals themselves. Descriptive statistics were employed to describe the participants' responses and constant comparative analysis was used to quantify the survey data.

Results According to the survey results, ninety-two percent of the school superintendents confirmed the validity of the twenty-one factors identified in the prior literature. However, fewer than eight percent reported having any methodology for applying those criteria to the school principal hiring process. Given the obvious correlation between the quality of school principals in relation to those factors, it is clear that school superintendents must develop practices and methods for using those criteria during the school principal hiring process.

Recommendations, Conclusion, and Implications Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that public school superintendents develop specific assessment procedures and tools to enable them to better evaluate prospective candidates for school principals. Specifically, those methods and tools must relate.