Training or Career? Exploring the Ambiguous Role of the Assistant Principalship in the Leadership Pipeline

• In Event: 18.017 - Exploring the K–12 Leadership Labor Market in Different Contexts

Abstract

Significance and Perspective

Recent scholarly research, coupled with notable financial investment, underscore the importance of leadership pipelines in today’s policy context. Unlike the teacher pipeline—where teachers move in a smooth and orderly fashion from their coursework, to their clinical experience, to licensure, and into the job market—many aspiring principals spend some time in the classroom after licensure before moving into a formal leadership position. For the majority of principals, their first administrative role is as an assistant principal (AP). Numerous studies provide consistent evidence that time as an AP provides an immensely valuable opportunity for experiential learning and provides a strong foundation for subsequent leadership development. Indeed, we take the perspective of Marshall and Hooley (2006) that administrative teams should be the basic functional unit of schools—thus, assistant principals and principals need to work as a team in order for the school to be effective.
And yet, the role of the AP varies drastically across schools and seldom has a clear, commonly understood evaluation framework. Thus, the assistant principalship is simultaneously an essential and yet ambiguous component in the leadership pipeline.

Objective

This study seeks to better understand the AP position by: documenting the heterogeneity in the tasks undertaken; the degree of congruence between AP tasks and formal AP preparation; and, how the variation in AP experiences corresponds to school- and principal- characteristics. Moreover, this study endeavors to explore how these findings vary across different labor markets.

Measures, Sample, and Methods

To sufficiently capture the breadth of variation that exists in the AP position we adopted a survey method of data collection. We constructed two surveys, one for principals and one for APs, with both structured around the newly released Professional Standards for Educational Leaders and recent surveys of leadership tasks and behaviors (e.g., Barnett, 2012; Grissom & Loeb, 2011). For principals, we focused on their reflections of their AP experiences and how they currently employ APs in their school. For APs we focused on their tasks and responsibilities, how well they were prepared to undertake these tasks and responsibilities, and future career aspirations.

Our sampling frame was all principals and assistant principals employed by North Carolina in the spring of 2016. The survey was deployed for 5 weeks and we received responses from just over 2,200 individuals. We couple this data with school value-added measures, teacher and principal evaluations, salary, mobility, and school climate to address the ways in which organizational context interacts with AP tasks.

Results and Conclusions

Preliminary analyses show notable heterogeneity among the undertakings and assignments of APs. Indeed, we found that tasks assigned to APs varied considerably across school level, school performance level, school size, and labor market. Importantly, we found that APs were assigned far more tasks in smaller schools and in rural labor markets. We also found that female APs were more likely to be assigned duties related to curriculum and instruction while male APs and APs of color were more likely to be assigned duties that included student discipline.

Authors

• Peter Trabert Goff, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kevin Christopher Bastian, University of North Carolina