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.

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.

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.