Proof Points: Research on who gets tapped school principal

This is a weekly newsletter. Sign up for a free subscription, and invite a friend to subscribe.

A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

Share

Forward

Was this newsletter forwarded to you?
Click here to subscribe!

By Jill Barshay

I’ve been thinking about the ways that “systemic racism” manifests itself in education. Two weeks ago, I wrote about school funding and how wealthy white suburban Americans fund their schools at a much higher rate than everyone else. And today I’m looking at who gets to run schools and become principal. A Texas study found that white men still have an edge even though they now account for a minority of principals.

Read the column

Key Findings

Black principal candidates were 18 percent less likely to be promoted to principal than equally qualified whites.
Not only was the Black rate of promotion lower but Black candidates who were promoted also had to wait longer to become principals.
Latinos had the same chance of becoming a principal and tended to wait the same number of years for the promotion as their non-Hispanic white peers. There was no evidence of anti-Latino discrimination in principal promotion in this study but there is a giant gap between the proportion of Latino students and the proportion of Latino principals.
Women have the same chance of being promoted to principal as men do but their promotions were delayed.

Teacher Takeaway

The researchers’ advice to both females and teachers of color who aspire to become principals is to tell others about their ambitions early in their careers. “We want to be careful about saying this is the responsibility of the marginalized group to fix,” said Bailes, “but there is an advantage to being assertive about your career aspirations and putting yourself forward for leadership.”

Lit Review

Bailes, L. P., & Guthery, S. (2020). Held Down and Held Back: Systematically Delayed Principal Promotions by Race and Gender. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420929298
National Center for Education Statistics, Characteristics of Public School Teachers. Updated: May 2020.
National Center for Education Statistics, School and Staffing Survey (2011-12)
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013314_t1s_001.asp
National Center for Education Statistics . (2016). Trends in public and private school principal demographics and qualifications: 1987-88 to 2011-12. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016189.pdf
Texas Education Agency. Teacher Demographics: 2018-19.
https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/Employed%20Teacher%20Demographics%202014-15%20through%202018-19.pdf
Texas Education Agency. Principal Demographics 2018-19.
https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/Employed%20Principal%20Demographics%202014-15%20through%202018-19.pdf