We Need a New Approach to Principal Selection

In charting a course to sail your boat around the world, you don't hire a navigator who still believes the Earth is flat. Yet we continue to ask those vested in our present education system to create a new vision for educating our children. We must move away from the biased opinions of the past to create a new, more effective job description for principals who can turn around failing schools.

While the investment in current principals is significant, it may not necessarily be able to provide the new direction needed. This is because it is based on a paradigm reliant on outdated geography. As W. Edwards Deming, an American scientist who won the National Medal of Technology in 1987 and who helped create the Japanese manufacturing and innovation boom, reportedly said when asked for his view of American education, "If you continue to do what you're doing, you will continue to get what you're getting." We believe, based on experiences working with groups of education leaders and analysis of the skills of educators over the last 30 years, that the present system is fraught with old-school, flat-earth-style methods and self-serving practices.

Let's look at the facts.

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