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A majority of the participants (64%) hold terminal degrees and the majority (50%) have 6 – 10 years of classroom experience. Additionally, 54% claimed 21 or more years of administrative experience. Coupled with the fact that 82% served as a building principal at one time or another during their administrative career, this sample, although small, could be considered a well seasoned and experienced field of public school administrators.

One delimitation, however, to inferring the survey results to the at-large population of CSAs is that a majority of the respondents came from average to above average middle class, suburban school communities, as was previously mentioned under Population Surveyed. A representative sample of respondents from urban and inner city school districts was negligible. This limits the possible conclusions and implications that can be drawn with regard to the evaluation of New Jersey school building principals from the results of this survey to primarily average, middle class suburban school environments.

Survey findings

The purpose of the survey, and this project in general, was twofold - to acquire a sense of what is important to the evaluation process of New Jersey public school building principals as perceived by their administrative superiors using the ISLLC standards as the operative content model; and to attempt to distinguish between what are the essential, as opposed to the important, leadership functions and job responsibilities of a building principal as defined by the ISLLC standards and determined by New Jersey Chief School Administrators through the summative evaluation process. However, since a majority of responses were from suburban chief school administrators, all results and potential conclusions can only be inferred to school building principals employed in suburban school districts.

A cursory review of participant responses indicated that all of the standards and their respective functions are considered “essential” or “important” to CSAs when developing summative evaluations for their district’s principals. In fact, the total mean score for all survey questions was 223 with a standard deviation of 19.29. Since a survey total score of 264 indicates a selection of “essential” for each survey item, the mean score obtained indicates that all respondents believed these functions to be important when developing a principal’s summative evaluation.

Responses to the survey questions obtained median scores ranging from 4.00 to 3.00 and standard deviations ranging from .19 and .75. This relatively small degree of variability indicates that the median scores are a strong and reliable indicator of central tendency (Witte&Witte, 2007).

These previously identified quantitative observations suggest a level of operational credibility for each of the ISLLC standards and their subsequent functions. Upon closer review, however, some of the standards and their respective functions appeared to be more important than others.

The footprint for ISLLC Standard 1 is: An education leader promotes the success of every student by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by all stakeholders (CCSSO, 2007). Seventy-seven per cent of the respondents believed that the element of function 1A which requires building leaders to collaboratively implement a shared vision and mission (CCSSO, 2007, p.1) is essential. That aspect of function 1C which states, create and implement plans to achieve goals (CCSSO, 2007, p.1), is believed to be an important skill a principal needs to be able to implement in his/her respective school community by 81% of the respondents. Conversely, only 52% of the respondents believe that the ability to promote organizational learning (CCSSO, 2007, p.1), a component of function 1C, is an essential function of the building principal. These results suggest that suburban CSAs not only place an importance on vision but the implementation and realization of that vision by their district’s principals.

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Source:  OpenStax, Ncpea education leadership review, volume 10, number 1; february 2009. OpenStax CNX. Jun 05, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10630/1.9
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