Background:Current federal, state, and local school accountability measures as well as policy initiatives that call for improved leadership have placed increasing demands on principals. Many districts face shortages of appropriate candidates for the job; popularly, this shortage is explained by the fact that simply too few hero-principals exist for all openings available, particularly in high-needs districts. An alternative to finding the perfect—and rare—candidate for an increasingly untenable position is to restructure the job itself.
Purpose:This article examines 10 schools that have adopted alternative structures: schools with two principals, three principals, and rotating principals and a school with the principal’s duties distributed among teachers. These 10 sites provide examples of alternative ways of organizing school leadership with varying benefits and challenges.
Research Methods:Data collection at the 10 schools included site visits conducted by a team of researchers, interviews with principals, teacher leaders, and district supervisors. Observational and interview protocols were adapted from the Northwestern University Distributed Leadership Study. These protocols focus on uncovering not only how school site leaders explain their decisions but also on providing evidence of what those decisions are. Interview and observational data were organized into thematic codes to permit cross-case comparison.
Findings:We observed the idiosyncratic ways in which schools and districts approached the policy dilemmas associated with attempts to change the default administrative structure of principal and assistant principal. Some schools with coprincipals, for example, thrived; others struggled. Where local school sites participated actively with the policy-making process that produced these arrangements, the alternative seemed viable. Where alternatives were imposed without school input, implementation floundered. The findings analyze the origins of the reforms, school site roles, costs and benefits, the role of the district, and the long-term stability of the approach.
Implications:In this article, we describe the experiences of 10 schools that have experimented with alternative arrangements for school site leadership. These experiences offer schools, districts, school boards, and researchers a series of questions to consider as they contemplate reforming the principalship itself rather than (or in addition to) preparing and searching for competent principals.
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