The recent headline about how effective principals make a difference in high poverty schools really resonated with me. My elementary school in Memphis, Tennessee would have been considered on of those high poverty schools, based on the high percentage of low-income families.
Joseph K. Carr, the principal at my elementary school, saved my life. He was known as a disciplinarian and no student wanted to get in trouble under Mr. Carr’s watch. We feared and respected him. His words of encouragement to all the students were “If not you, then who?” He challenged us all to reach our highest potential. Those words set me on my educational journey.
A new study on principal effectiveness focused on high poverty schools and found that:
. . . . high-quality principals—as determined by a value-added model that includes student achievement and school characteristics—had a large positive impact on their students’ achievement: “A principal in the top 16 percent of the quality distribution…will lead annually to student gains that are .05 standard deviations or more higher than average for all students in the school emphasis is the authors’.”
They also tended to be associated with teacher turnover in the lowest-performing grades in their schools—indicating, perhaps, that these principals are trying to replace low-performing teachers with more-effective ones.
Based on my observations of schools over the past 15 years, I would argue that strong leadership makes a difference in any school, whether it is high poverty, low-poverty, independent, parochial, or other. The leadership sets the tone and culture of the school. A school is only as strong as its principal.
What difference has your principal made?