The Principal Problem

There has been some discussion of incompetent principals in the comments to previous blogs - so I thought I would reproduce an excerpt from a letter I received from Don Cropp, a retired high school science teacher. After regaling me with many amusing anecdotes about his various incompetent principals, Don writes as follows.

"In the Wallasey Grammar School [in Scotland] which I attended, there was a Headmaster (who had no scheduled teaching duties but who, when his work permitted, filled in for absent teachers) and a Second Master who took on a half-load of teaching. The support staff consisted of the headmaster's secretary and the custodial staff of three-four persons. To some extent, the academic evaluation of the school was measured by the students' success in national examinations, and in this both staff and students had a vested interest. Unlike the present Ontario system which is driven by politics and bogus 'successes' rather than measurement by disinterested agencies....

"Lord Kelvin, who was famous for his work on thermodynamics and electricity during the 19th century, once stated that 'when you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind'. By measurement, of course, he was referring to a comparison with a recognized and agreed standard (ruler, thermometer, balance weights). We do not measure or evaluate students' academic performances in Ontario, since there are no agreed standards. As noted above, awarded marks are numbers which are often plucked from the air by someone who has no idea of the subject matter of the course and probably no clue as to the abilities of the students in the class. (Editor's note - one of Don's enduring complaints concerns his principals who arbitrarily raised the marks Don had awarded his students.)

"In many other academic professions, performance evaluations are carried out by other knowledgeable practitioners from outside. Historians, phys ed teachers, guidance heads, etc. are not qualified to judge the teaching practices of teachers of mathematics, physics, and chemistry - yet they often rise to the rank of principal and are expected to do so. Furthermore, evaluations carried out in-house will always lack the disinterestedness of outsiders, but are instead frequently loaded with biases, opinions, and politics. In my experience, there was nothing to indicate that those who rose to administrative positions were particularly skilled as teachers, and they often had less experience in the classroom than those on whom they passed judgment.

"I saw little evidence that they were exceptionally skilled at personnel management, and a few had a great reluctance to enforce any discipline with the students. (What is that quote about prisons being run by the prisoners?) I felt that most of them should have stuck to their knitting and concerned themselves with classroom allocation, timetabling, and school bus scheduling - keeping their noses out of academic matters. Perhaps the principal's job should be broken down into two positions - one whose job is to keep the books and run the administrative affairs of the school (and absorb the bureaucratic demands of the board of education) and the other to be an academic head to oversee the teaching and learning carried outwithin the establishment. Even then, what qualifications would such a head need to judge high school teachers in so many different subjects?"

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