The Superintendent’s Expectations of the Negro High School Principal in Mississippi

Abstract

THE PURPOSE of this study was to determine I whether the principals of accredited secondary schools for Negroes in Mississippi were meeting the expectations of the superintendents under whom they served, with regard to thirty approved prac tices for secondary principals. Of the 207 school administrators participating in the study, 121 were principals which represented 87. 6 percent of the 138 principals serving in accred ited secondary schools for Negroes; 86 were super intendents which represented 81.1 percent of the 106 superintendents under whom the principals served. The principals and superintendents repre sented the three types of public schools maintained by the State of Mississippi; County Unit, Consoli dated, and the Municipal Separate School District. A questionnaire, adapted from the CheckList for School Administrators developed by the School of Education, University of Mississippi, 1960, and the questionnaire used in the National Secondary School Principals (1) survey were used as the prin cipal means for obtaining the desired data. Each item was to be answered with either yes** or no** and a judgment of degree of importance expressed for each. The questionnaire for the principals is shown at the end of this article. The items in the question naire for the superintendents parallel those for the principals, but differ slightly in structure. Where as, for example, the first item on the principal's questionnaire reads: Do you devote the major por tion of your time to the improvement of the instruc tional program?'* , the first item on the superinten dent's questionnaire reads: Do you expect him (the Negro principal) to devote the major portion of his time to the improvement of the i n s t r u c t i onal program?** The responses of principals and superintendents were tested for statistical significance of difference between groups by the chi-square test of signifi cance of difference, and for proportion by the Z test for equality of proportion. The . 01 level of significance was accepted as an indication of the existence of a true difference be tween expectations and practices of superintendents and principals, and importance of practices as as signed by each. Responses to ten of the thirty items were sig nificantly different at the . 01 level, as shown in Ta ble 1. This indicates that principals do not perceive their role and duties according to the expectations of their superintendents with respect to items 1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 16, 19, 20, 25, and 30. In general, these items are concerned with evaluation of curriculum, managerial responsibility, public relations, and vo cational guidance. Six of the ten items where sig nificant differences occurred lie within the area of instructional improvement, wherein authorities rec ommend that the local school administrator should be spending the majority of his time and effort. Responses to the other 20 items were not signifi cantly different at the . 01 level as shown in Table 1. This indicates that, for these items, no statistically significant difference was observed betwe e n the principals' perception of their role and duties and the expectations of superintendents with regard to these items. These items are concerned with con sultation with the superintendent, assisting teachers in improving methods of instruction, involving the community in a continuing study of the sch oo 1 and its problems, providing sources of instructional materials, personnel problems, non-teaching re sponsibilities, general guidance service, w o r k i ng with student activities, securing and assigning staff members, and involving the staff in the administra tive process. It was presumed that the proportion of yes re sponses would be the same for both principals and superintendents; however, the observed difference in proportion of yes responses was large enough to indicate that principals and superintendents dif fered significantly in their responses to items 1, 2,