Do Principals Affect Student Outcomes: An Organizational Perspective

ABSTRACT This research study investigated the principal's role as instructional manager, its relationship to student achievement, and how principals influence teachers to accomplish the school's goal of increasing student learning. Conceptually, principal instructional management includes those processes, both mental and physical, that the principal uses which result in other people executing formal and informal duties to achieve organizational goals. It deals mainly with planning, organizing and controlling teacher behavior to achieve organizational goals, but also includes monitoring and controlling resources. Subjects for the study included elementary school (K‐8) principals and teachers in 27 schools. Student achievement gain was determined by regression analysis where current achievement was regressed on prior achievement and SES for two years of data. Principal instructional management behavior was measured by a modified form of the Instructional Management Rating Scales, or IMRS (Hallinger, 1983). The results from the study question whether principals should be led by researchers and policymakers into thinking that increasing their instructional management behaviors will turn ineffective schools into effective ones. School improvement is a complex process that involves a host of factors which principals can influence, but not control. While principals play an important role as part of the schools' efforts in school improvement, the role of the principal in school improvement, must be placed in its proper perspective.