0.3 Peck, c., & Mullen, c. a. (april 2010). “feet to the fire”:  (Page 4/8)

Urban school district leaders have made similar public statements about the essential role that school principals play in fostering school success. Because of media coverage, these rhetorical messages often reach wide and varied audiences. For example, Pittsburgh Superintendent Mark Roosevelt informed the national newspaper Education Week that “Developing a school leader who is an effective instructional leader needs to be at the center of any reform effort” (Samuels, 2008, p. 6). Education Week also reported that, with financial support from the Broad Foundation, Superintendent Roosevelt initiated the Pittsburgh Urban Leadership System for Excellence (PULSE) to provide instructional leadership training (Samuels, 2008). Similarly, North Carolina’s Charlotte–Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman stated, “The principal is the key lever for change at any school” (Charlotte–Mecklenburg Schools and New Leaders for New Schools, 2008, p. 1). Superintendent Gorman stated this viewpoint in a district-sponsored public relations notice announcing a new partnership with the New Leaders for New Schools principal preparation program. In both the rhetoric of his public relations message and the establishment of the NLNS relationship, Superintendent Gorman symbolically underscored how principals would play vital school improvement roles in his district.

Likewise, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, from early on in his public pronouncements, made it clear principals were a key to his reform strategy. Personally selected in 2002 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to transform the nation’s largest school system, Chancellor Klein spread his message about the importance of principals to a national audience. For instance, he explained to US News and World Report that “Schools are the basic unit that needs changing, and if we can empower the principals to lead their schools, we can reform the system from the top down and the bottom up” (Kingsbury, 2006, p. 2). Chancellor Klein expressed to New York magazine that “a single principal can actually influence a school’s worth of teachers” (Kolker, 2003, p. 3). Signifying the importance that Chancellor Klein, and by extension Mayor Bloomberg, placed on principals, they sought the creation of the New York City Leadership Academy, which started in 2003. The Leadership Academy provides training and coaching to a yearly cohort of prospective principals in its Aspiring Principals Program (NYC Leadership Academy, 2009).

Principals as ultimately responsible for school improvement

Urban school district leaders have coupled their public emphasis on the importance of school principals with initiatives and public rhetoric that hold principals directly responsible for school performance. Some mechanisms have included financial incentives for successful principals to assume leadership of persistently troubled schools in districts like Charlotte–Mecklenburg in North Carolina (WSOC Television, 2008), as was reported on a TV news Web site. The New York Times described how Chancellor Klein’s administration negotiated with the principal’s union a maximum $25,000 bonus for principals who agreed to work for 3 years in underperforming schools (Herszenhorn, 2007).