Recruiting Certified Personnel to be Principals: A Statewide Assessment of Potential Job Applicants.

Abstract

An essential administrative responsibility accorded to state- and district-level education leaders is the task of planning for staffing needs, including the recruitment of competent leaders to fill principal vacancies (Castetter & Young, 2000; Rebore, 2001). This task is becoming increasingly difficult to perform. Recent education recruitment studies (Bowles, King, & Crow, 2000; Education Research Service, 1998; Fenwick, 2000; National Association of Elementary and secondary School Principals, 1998; Whitaker, 2001) indicate there is a growing national shortage of qualified applicants for principal vacancies. One factor contributing to this shortage is the massive retirement of school administrators from the post-World War II baby boom generation (National Association of Elementary and secondary School Principals, 1998). While school administrator employment will increase by 20% by the year 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 40% of the nation's principals are nearing retirement (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000). The applicant shortage noted above does not exist because there are insufficient numbers of principal certified personnel available to apply for position vacancies. To the contrary, there are adequate numbers of individuals who are principal certified and are nominally qualified to assume principal positions. However, a majority of certified personnel are not applying for principal vacancies, in part, because they are not attracted to the job (McAdams, 1998). The decreased attractiveness of the principalship is due to (a) the enormous responsibilities accorded to public school principals in today's educational environment emphasizing school reform and (b) the increased principal accountability for improving student achievement (Duke, 1998; Murphy & Beck, 1994; Portin, Shen, & Williams, 1998). The site for this study was Kentucky, a state undergoing systemic school reform via programs that include high-stakes student achievement tests, with school principals being the most visible individuals held accountable for student performance (Petrosko, 2000). A statewide K-12 leadership consortium, led by the Kentucky Department of Education, commissioned the researchers to conduct this study to access reliable data to support planning and policy decisions related to administrator recruitment and development. Purpose The research objectives were to: (a) construct a statewide profile of principal certified personnel characteristics and activity relative to interviewing for principal jobs and receiving job offers; (b) measure the participants' degree of attraction to principal positions; (c) measure the participants' level of satisfaction with characteristics of their current jobs compared to their expected satisfaction with those same job characteristics if they were to assume a position as principal; (d) identify reasons why the participants earned principal certification; (e) capture the participants' ratings of changes in the job of principal that might make the job more attractive; and (f) have the state's principal certified personnel rate barriers to assuming a job as principal. Accomplishing the above objectives resulted in developing empirical measures to allow state departments of education and school districts to assess their principal certified personnel in terms of recruitment planning and developing policies to restructure the principalship. Methods This study was a causal-comparative study involving the use of a survey questionnaire to collect the data. Descriptive statistics served to profile the study participants and their job pursuit activity in terms of interviewing for principal vacancies and receiving job offers. The inferential statistical analysis included paired t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, and ordinary least-squares stepwise multiple regression. Participants The participants were 466 principal certified personnel not currently employed as principals from all 176 school districts in Kentucky. …