Accountability, autonomy and stress: principal responses to superintendent change in a large US urban school district

Abstract

This study investigates how principals in a large US urban school district responded to two different superintendents who employed contrasting leadership styles and utilised divergent organisational schemes. We originally conducted interviews with principals in 2007, when the district's superintendent asserted fierce performance demands and limited principals' site-based discretion in favour of protecting and exerting central office power. We conducted interviews again in 2013 after a new superintendent had relaxed school test score expectations and distributed the central office's previously tight, centralised control into largely self-directing sub-regions. Our findings demonstrate that superintendent change noticeably affected how principals understood and encountered accountability, autonomy and stress. To help make sense of our findings, we employ a three-part conceptual framework drawn from the study of educational leadership. We conclude by considering implications, including the notion that unrelenting stress has become a permanent part of the modern urban US principalship.This study situates at the nexus of district and building leadership in order to provide particular attention to the lived experiences of school-based leaders. In doing so, we build on previous research that has examined the work lives and attitudes of principals (Leithwood et al. 2004;Mintrop 2012;Shipps 2012;Spillane and Hunt 2010). Specifically, we investigate how principals responded to two different superintendents (chief school system leaders) in a large urban school district in the Southeastern United States. In 2007, the superintendent, Dr Morgan (a pseudonym), exhibited an aggressive, top-down management style in which he demanded immediate results and exerted constant accountability performance pressure regarding school aggregate test scores. In 2008, a new superintendent, Mr Davis (a pseudonym), took over the district. By 2013, he had established greater system-wide autonomy and deemphasised using aggregate school test scores as the predominant determinant of principal performance. Symbolic of the differences between the two superintendents' approaches to principals, Dr Morgan was well known for either demoting principals or transferring them to a different school two or three years after they took their positions. Under Mr Davis, conversely, ensuring principal stability became a stated systemic goal, and the district introduced a modest financial incentive plan intended to reward principals who stayed at their schools for at least five years.

Bridging accountability obligations, professional values and (perceived) student needs with integrity

“…School D is another striking case. This school exhibited relatively higher instructional quality, but abysmally low API and API growth [7]. Thus, under these circumstances, any school climate or culture variable can only have an ambiguous relationship to educational quality.…”

Autonomy and accountability: the power/knowledge knot

“…(2) Contexts, cultures and situations matter which means that being dogmatic and inflexible does not account for human differences and good decision-making (West et al 2014;Zepeda et al 2014;McCray and Beachum 2014). (3) Power corrupts, especially when you forget that the purposes of education are democracy and mutual understanding and that governments have cut, shortsightedly, public school/public university funding (West et al 2014;ReyesGuerra et al 2014;Cyprès 2014).…”

“…(3) Power corrupts, especially when you forget that the purposes of education are democracy and mutual understanding and that governments have cut, shortsightedly, public school/public university funding (West et al 2014;ReyesGuerra et al 2014;Cyprès 2014).…”

“…On the other hand, within today's era of accountability, there have been innovative responses by schools and school districts to reclaim their rights to curriculum and instruction (see West et al 2014;Cyprès 2014). It is within these competing political, social and economic environments that the authors here have reframed the meanings of educational autonomy and accountability within decidedly US contexts.…”

“…But it is up to educational leadership researchers to make sense of these tensions and complexities and that is what the US authors have done. Beginning with West et al (2014) and Zepeda et al (2014) articles, the focus is on school district leadership and the key actors here are superintendents and principals. Not only does their leadership matter, but it also influences the culture and climate in which educators work.…”