Theories and Concepts in HR Management

All school administrators are human resource leaders because they work with and make decisions about people. When we look at school budgets personnel costs vary from 50% to 80%. As we, the school leaders, spend most of our resources on human resources, we also spend most of our time with the adults in a school building. I look at the principal position as coaching. In sports terms, the principal is the coach and teachers are the players. The coach’s job is to observe the players while playing and give them feedback to improve their individual performance along with the team’s performance. The coach does not play but observe. The coach is where the game is being played. And the coach understands the game.

What Does it Take to Retain Good Teachers?

Studies have shown that good teachers can improve student achievement by as much as an extra grade level during a school year. In the previous blog we talked about what principals should look for in teachers. Spotting and hiring good teachers is a challenge for principals. What is more challenging is how to keep them.

Martin Haberman of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has developed an interview designed to identify effective urban teachers. The Haberman Urban Teacher Selection Interview has been used to hire 30,000 teachers in 160 cities, and Haberman says that follow-up studies suggest these hires have performed at least as well as other teachers and remain in the profession longer.

What to Look for in Teachers?

Good teachers are key to school success. Students spend most of their time with the teachers in the classroom. There are studies that show the detrimental impact of having a bad teacher on students. In the mean time, we all remember that good teacher who had a life long influence on us. 

Effective principals know this as a fact and spend a lot of time in selecting the best teachers possible. It also takes a seasoned principal to identify good teachers and those candidates with potential to be a good teacher. What should a principal look for in a teacher? Here is a list of characteristics that good teachers have in common based on research. McREL researcher Bryan Goodwin identifies them in a 2010 Educational Leadership article.

"Cages of Their Own Design" by Frederic Hess

Principals, particularly in charter schools, think that they are or will be hamstrung by union contracts, policies, and regulations as the conventional wisdom suggests. However, American Enterprise Institute education director Frederick Hess suggests differently in a 2009 article in Educational Leadership.

 

Hess believes that many school leaders are afflicted by “debilitating timidity” that makes them “tepid agents of change.” Principals and superintendents should boldly take advantage of the power they have, says Hess. He describes how principals can do that:

A Major Element in Human Resources: Negotiation. What Can We Learn From the U.S. Army About Negotiation?

Conflict is inevitable in democratic organizations due to divergent views of individuals. Conflict takes place between individuals or groups and arises from disagreements regarding values, responsibilities, and ways of doing things, as well as from competition for scarce resources.

“Negotiation is the most widely used means for settling conflict in organizations and is the least costly in terms of time and money.” (Seyfarth, 252) Simple conflicts could be resolved through negotiations. In their efforts to resolve conflicts with and between teachers, and parents, school leaders negotiate almost every day. They have to be skillful negotiators so they can resolve conflicts relatively quickly to maintain a positive, productive, and vibrant environment.

Effective Teacher Induction Programs

Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel-laureate physicist at The Ohio State University, co-author of Redesigning Education uses the analogy of climbing a mountain when describing what teaching means for new teachers. “There are two ways to get into it,” observes Kenneth Wilson, “You could take a practice run with somebody who has lots of experience and the ability to share it. The other way is to be taken to the base of Everest, dropped off, and told to get to the top or quit. If you don’t make it, your enthusiasm disappears, and you seek ways to avoid similar challenges in the future.” (1)

Effective Principal

“Producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect: impressive, striking: ready for service or action: actual: being in effect: operative. This is how Merriam- Webster defines the highly-sought adjective in today’s world, “effective.” Another dictionary defines it as “adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.” However, when this mighty adjective is put before “principal” or “school leader” it encompasses more than its explicit meaning in the dictionary.  

“The intended or expected results” of business is to make money. Neither business nor leaders of such business would be called effective if there is no profit involved. One would not call his/her car “an effective way of transportation” if it is not moving, hence not serving its intended or expected result.

Role of Supervision and Evaluation in Education

The process by which most teachers are supervised and evaluated in our schools is inefficient, ineffective, and a poor use of principals’ time. It’s based on a flawed theory of action: that supervision and evaluation will improve teachers’ effectiveness and therefore boost student achievement. I think the process drastically needs to be streamlined and be linked a more effective strategy for improving teaching and learning. I have not seen any teacher who told me that a formal summative evaluation changed his teaching style or improved her/his instruction.

A Mind boggling video on Goverment Debt...

I hope this is not true...What this "Government Gone Wild" video talk about is more than scary...If Congress stopped ALL spending today and did not spend a nickle on anything else and they made payments of a $100 M a day, it would take us 389 years jut to pay off our national debt...
Click here for the video...

School Culture Begins with Staff: A Great Tool for School Leaders

In the summer of 2000, I was cruising down the tortuous Old Pacific Highway 101 with three of my ninth grade students. It was a road trip that I had organized when I was teaching in a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio. I, along with three of my students, drove from Cleveland to California. It took us two weeks and 7,500 miles back and forth where we saw many “see before you die” type of places, had great fun, and came back with unforgettable memories. My students who are now successful college graduates and professionals still talk about the trip.

When I, once, was bragging about our trip to a traditional public school teacher he responded that he “would not take [his students] across the street, yet I took [my students] to California” with such amazement.  Now, I think about his response that is reminds me of another response that I got from one of my teachers when I was a charter school principal years later. When requested to do home visits to her students, this teacher responded to me that she “did not feel safe going to the neighborhood that our students lived in.”

It is the Principal that matters the most...

Although, there are other purposes of schooling such as creating productive citizens maintaining a desired culture, it is mainly preparing students for life and providing them with skills necessary to survive and succeed in the society that they live in. The desired outcome of schooling is learning. The person who plays the most profound role in making sure that learning takes place in a school is the school leader. Effective schools that produce the desired and expected results are created and sustained largely through effective leadership. Both education lore and research on leadership agree on one point: when it comes to creating effective schools, it's the principal that matters the most.

Charter schools, autonomy, and teacher unions...

 There are three premises on which all charter school operate:

Autonomy, Accountability, and Choice.

Therefore, autonomy matters for charter schools. It is the autonomy not only in human resources but also in curriculum, unique, innovative programs and opportunities that they offer to their students, financial management, school calendar, facility, and much more…

Unless charter schools have autonomy over their staff, the rest of the autonomy given to them by the state becomes less meaningful and effective. They are able to utilize all the autonomy that they have in curriculum, programs, budget, calendar, and facility only when autonomy over their staff exist. Staff is the most critical component in their success hence the autonomy over human resources.