The social and organizational influence of principals: Evaluating principals in context

Principals lead organizations that are among the most important in our society. They fill a pivotal role in schools. While their responsibilities often include teacher evaluation, practices of principal evaluation have not kept pace in focus, sophistication, or reliability with changes in schools and schooling or with developments in teacher evaluation. Principal evaluation remains an underdeveloped aspect of education research and development (Duke & Stiggins, 1985). While some argue that the complexity of schools makes principals' evaluation on the basis of outcomes unrealistic, the need increases for models that tie evaluation more closely with valued outcomes. With expanding diversity of structure and goals among public schools, the growing popularity of sitebased management and parental governance committees, and mounting demands for accountability for outcomes rather than procedural compliance from schools, these needs can only grow. In the face of these demands, frameworks for principal evaluation tend to be atheoretical and idiosyncratic. Models that tie principal evaluation to accountability for outcomes deserve exploration. This article describes one possible model based on the interaction of principals with the social system of schools. It relies on organizational socialization and leader/follower interaction theories and explores factors that link principals' actions to the positive outcomes they seek in schools. These factors then can be incorporated into principal evaluation practices.