0.3 Peck, c., & Mullen, c. a. (april 2010). “feet to the fire”:  (Page 2/8)

Each school will receive a grade, from “A” to “F,” on its year-to-year progress in helping students advance. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to hold a principal’s feet to the fire than arming mom and dad with the facts about how well or poorly their children’s school is performing. (pp. 3-4)

American urban school district and reform leaders, such as Chancellor Rhee and Mayor Bloomberg, are utilizing principal-centered rhetoric and symbols worthy of scholarly attention and analysis. Our concern for this issue springs from our personal histories and research interests. The first author served as a public high school principal in a major urban city as district leaders utilized media outlets to consistently designate principals as the crucial elements in their efforts to improve the school system. Both authors share an academic interest in examining the roles that ritual, symbols, media, and politics play in the culture of schooling.

For this inquiry, we ask two questions: Through media-disseminated rhetoric and symbols, how have urban school district and reform leaders portrayed principals? And, what political effects may result from the sustained media emphasis on urban principal accountability? We respond to the first question in the results section and the second in the discussion section. This study is exploratory in nature and our discourse in regards to political nuances and effects is necessarily speculative. We hope our writing will help generate further dialogue about how and why urban school district and reform leaders hold principals publicly accountable for school success.

Relevant literature in educational leadership and policy

For over a decade now, scholars have been examining the roles of rhetoric and symbols in educational leadership and policy. In their historical analysis of public school reform in the U.S., Tyack and Cuban (1995) described the “rhetoric of reform” as “a dramatic exchange in a persistent theater of aspiration and anxiety” (p. 42). Political scientist Edelman (1988) defined symbol as “that facet of experiencing the material world that gives it a specific meaning” (p. 8). In essence, symbols reflect underlying political values and themes that actors (e.g., superintendents) are hoping to present to a broader audience. Drawing upon Edelman’s concepts, Smith, Miller-Kahn, Heinecke, and Jarvis (2004) and Anderson (2007), among other researchers, have examined how symbolic language and actions contribute to a media-created “political spectacle” that can simplify or distort complex policy issues like school accountability. Bolman and Deal (2008) have established that organizations such as schools are partly characterized by their rituals and symbols. From their perspective, rituals give structure and meaning to daily organizational life and symbols are created to enhance clarity and order. Our analysis draws upon these educational ideas and opens up a new avenue of inquiry in its attention to the rhetoric and symbols of urban principal accountability.