III. Potential Candidates: Former Principals

As discussed in section II, the highest criterion for school leadership is adequate instructional training, which not only helps set the standards for academic goals, but more importantly earns the commitment of teachers for reaching said goals. SUIS certainly recognizes the importance of instructional leadership which is why one of its criteria for a school leader position is ten or more years experience running a public or private school.

Selecting former public or private school principals for a leader position is discussed briefly in Steven F. Wilson’s book about running public schools as businesses. Public school principals, Wilson discloses, rarely meet the requirements for such leadership positions because their main tasks were “given over to attending parent issues, community-related tasks, discipline, and facilities management, and not to instructional leadership.” (250).

Furthermore such principals have trouble with the uncompromising mission-driven objectives of a for-profit education company. Wilson writes that although there are occasionally “dynamic principals who despite overwhelming odds had raised student performance, […] they were successful precisely because they broke the district’s rules and gamed its systems to get what they needed for students.” (250).

Finally it is suggested that public school principals often have trouble adjusting to a new fast-paced competitive environment because it is in stark contrast to the securities and comforts offered by school districts (Wilson 251).

On private school principals, Wilson shows more optimism. He says that private school heads are accustomed to the “twin demands of academic quality and financial discipline,” (251) making their experience more corresponding to the tasks companies such as SUIS require. On the other hand, private school heads tend to lack the entrepreneurial drive to raise and improve student achievement, which is a large part of the company’s mission. According to a SABIS director, private schools rarely experience the need to improve academic achievement because most of their students are high-achievers to begin with (Wilson 252). So while these candidates may possess an acceptable background in instruction and finance, it is not certain whether they possess the motivation to raise standards and competitiveness.

Wilson’s brief experience with identifying potential candidates is revealing but offers little help in deducing ways to improve recruitment strategy. According to him, former public school principals have a poor track record in for-profit education companies, yet it is very likely that these are the types who make up a majority of the candidates SUIS has to choose from. Therefore to achieve some level of effective scalability, SUIS may have to disregard a large number of its applicants and subject more qualified ones to a rigorous set of screening procedures followed by a probationary period which tests for adequacy of academic instruction.

Wilson’s account also reveals that the quality of candidates could potentially improve should SUIS develop methods to attract more former private school principals who have a better background in the financial aspect of leading schools than public school principals. This view is likewise supported by an article about charter school leaders published anonymously in Education Week which emphasizes the importance of being confident in both financial and instructional matters ('The High Wire Job' 8). If we recall what was learned from the SUIS principal job description, this matter is not to be downplayed.

Lastly, a few articles suggest that the required ten years minimum experience is more than necessary. The anonymous article published in Education Week claims that a minimum of three years experience is enough ('The High Wire Job' 7), while a study on school leaders and “shelf life” finds that peak experience is reached after seven (Earley and Weindling 76). These affirmations, although not much, are worth considering should SUIS be seeking methods to widen its search for potential candidates.