edited by Marc S. Tucker and Judy B. Codding
2002
How would you respond if your boss approached you and said, "I have a job for you. You will be fully responsible for how your unit performs, but you will only have marginal authority over the people who work for you. You can't fire them, you can't give them bonus pay, and you can't put your best performers in the toughest situations. And, by the way, you will have to work longer hours for the same rate of pay." Most people would say, "fuggedaboutit." Yet this is the reality facing school principals across the United States. No wonder many are bailing out. Worse, according to The Principal Challenge, is that "the pool of candidates willing to replace them is drying up at an alarming rate," a school leadership crisis that worsens with time. This hefty book, edited by Marc Tucker and Judy Codding of the National Center on Education and the Economy, examines the problems surrounding recruitment, retention and remuneration of high quality school leaders, particularly those in urban and rural areas. It terms utterly dysfunctional the current system for preparing and developing school principals for the challenges of leading schools in the 21st century, which resembles education schools doing their own thing. Wasteful, too. For example, states often provide teachers with tuition support to get their principal certification (allowing them to move up the pay scale), yet most of these folks have no intention of actually becoming principals. Tucker and Codding see the solution to the leadership crisis in a new form of professional development similar to that of the National War College, which chooses whom to train, rather than allowing candidates to nominate themselves. There is much in this book to consider, including the experience of other countries, the experience of business and the military in developing leaders, and the importance of ethical leadership. But the volume is flawed, too. It neglects to examine the experience of charter school principals, who already have many of the freedoms that successful school leaders need. (For more on that topic, see Fordham's report, "Autonomy and Innovation: How do Massachusetts Charter School Principals Use Their Freedom?" by Bill Triant, December 2001, at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=18.) To learn more about The Principal Challenge, see http://www.josseybass.com/cda/product/0,,0787964476,00.html. Its ISBN is 0-7879-6447-6.
