Posted on: Monday, January 31, 2005

Student performance key to principals' evaluations

By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Education Writer

Bruce Naguwa is all for improving student achievement, but he hasn't made up his mind about one of the tools intended to place accountability squarely on the shoulders of Hawai'i's public-school principals.

Principals already carry a heavy workload, and reforms enacted during the last legislative session will give them additional authority over spending and curriculum.

Meanwhile, performance contracts — also part of the reforms — are being devised to map out what's expected of principals, and how their accomplishments will be measured.

The approach is meant to treat principals similar to business executives, in the sense that they can be held personally accountable for successes and failures.

Naguwa, principal at Kipapa Elementary School, said he believes performance contracts can help schools and public accountability if they are handled well. If they are simply forced upon principals without meaningful dialogue and clear understanding, however, they could cause big problems, he said.

"If you just spring it on everybody and say 'this is it,' and they don't like it, there will probably be a lot of negative reaction," Naguwa said. "It's a good opportunity, but we'll have to see. Right now the jury is out until we see what the contracts will really look like."

The contracts are required to be in place here for the 2006-2007 school year under a comprehensive state public education overhaul law approved last year, called Act 51. The question now is what specific incentives should be provided to high achievers through the contracts, and what should happen when goals are not met.

A report released by the Department of Education several weeks ago outlined possible rewards, assistance and sanctions that principals might expect under a contract system.

Rewards could include extra money for principals and schools, assistance could include peer mentoring, and sanctions could include reassignment, demotion or termination, according to the report.

Some education and management experts believe strong contracts that set specific benchmarks can be powerful tools for academic improvement.

William Ouchi, a University of California at Los Angeles professor and key education consultant to Gov. Linda Lingle, said contracts should make it clear that principals are hired only for the term of the agreements, typically one year.

The schools superintendent should have the authority to renew or deny a new contract, without establishing any specific cause, Ouchi said.

"The concept of a contract is the most important thing of all, and that concept is that a principal is only appointed for the term of the contract," he said.

Key to Quality

Employing good principals is a crucial key to running quality schools, so holding principals accountable for school performance should be taken very seriously, Ouchi said.

"I would say that the single most important person in the school district is the principal," he said. "A good principal will attract and create good teachers, and that will produce the education. You will never find a successful school with a weak principal, ever."

Performance contracts are an emerging trend for principals of some Mainland schools, but the arrangements vary by location.

Contracts with clear goals and fair ways to measure achievement could help foster unity and a team spirit at schools, said Naguwa, the Kipapa Elementary principal. But a punitive approach could simply convince many principals to retire if they are eligible, and could discourage teachers from applying to replace them.

"When we have to sign on that dotted line come 2006, one of our concerns is that there will be a lot of vacancies in the near future," Naguwa said.

Ouchi said a principal's performance should be weighed largely by student improvement, as measured by state-adopted standardized test scores.

"You can't rely on grades, because you're going to have grade inflation, and you can't rely on graduation rates because people, if they know they're being measured on it, can just graduate everybody," he said.

Standardized tests are not perfect, but they're more reliable indicators, he said.

"The bottom line is to increase the performance of the students," Ouchi said. "You're trying to adopt those accountability measures that you think will obtain that. You're not trying to scare the principal. You're not trying to punish the principal. You're trying to improve the achievement of the children."

DOE program manager Randy Moore also said his personal view is that contracts should not be framed or viewed as punitive measures that threaten principals.

"The only place threats work are in slavery and prison," he said. "That doesn't work in a voluntary setting, and employment is voluntary."

Common goals

A punitive approach is especially wrong in an educational setting, said Moore, the department's point man on compliance with Act 51.

"In schools, you start with the expectation that children are going to learn, not that if they don't learn, we're going to beat them over the head," he said, and the same outlook should apply to principals.

It's better to say, "Here's what the employee and the supervisor are trying to achieve," Moore said.

Robert Hu, a civics and ethnic studies teacher at Mililani High School, said performance contracts for principals could be helpful if they unite schools around common goals.

"The principal is a very important person, but everyone at the school is important," he said. "Everyone has to work together for what's best for the children. It's a team effort."

Some teachers may seek to become principals because of the higher pay and prestige, but others enjoy teaching more or simply aren't cut out to be administrators. It will be interesting to see what impact performance contracts have, Hu said.

"If the principal treats the teachers well at the school, the staff will do really well and the principal will shine," he said. "If the morale is down at the school because the principal is not really helping them, that will be evident, I would think."

Ouchi said performance contracts that allow every principal to remain on the job won't accomplish anything.

"You've got to recognize that some percentage of principals just aren't going to be able to come up to the performance that we now expect," he said. "And that's the idea of the contract: you can just release those people at the end of their year. And there's going to have to be the will to do that, the courage to do that, even though it's always hard to do."

It's usually no huge secret when a principal is an unpopular and ineffective leader, Ouchi said.

"Usually a principal who's not doing well knows it, and doesn't have a positive relationship with the teachers or the parents," he said. "They're still collecting a paycheck, but they're not happy. So while there's some pain involved in having to look for another job or retire early, there's usually also some relief in being taken out of the situation that's an unhappy situation."

Reach Johnny Brannon at jbrannon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.