Training programs for principals

Abstract

Kenneth McIntyre Department of Educational Administration University of Texas Austin, Texas Even the best preparation program must start with trainable people if training is to be effective. We human beings have impressive resistances to change deep within us as individuals, and we make it even more difficult to achieve by building impediments to change into our organizations and social systems. Most of us, even with our built-in limitations, can learn the tasks and habits of living productively and happily in our complex society. We can't all leam (change) enough to become successful concert pianists, professional football players, mathematicians, or school principals. If we buy the proposition that the school principalship is a complex, tough, and demanding job that not everybody with a college degree could successfully handle, then we should look honestly at the record of the training institutions in the United States, insofar as the recruitment and selection of future school principals is concerned. What the record shows us is discomforting if not downright embarrassing. Very little actual, organized, systematic recruiting of potential school principals is going on and the overall results of non-selection are deplorable. Not only has the market been flooded with far more holders of administrative degrees and certificates than there will ever be openings to accommodate; but, even more troublesome, too many of these people have had as their main reason for getting the credential a desire to move up a step on the salary schedule. Others, actually interested in becoming school administrators but obviously lacking in even minimum requirements of scholarship, intelligence, or leadership ability, have been permitted to waste time, energy, and money in a futile and pathetic effort to become qualified for positions that no school official should ever offer to them. Just one example of our curious propensity for tolerating mediocrity should suffice to convince even the most skeptical that we do, indeed, tend to expect a lot of our training programs. The 1970 edition of the Miller Analogies Test Manual reveals that people preparing to be school administrators achieved the low-