The gender evolution of the school principal

2nd March 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer

In New Orleans, approximately 64 percent of the current public school principals are women — a percentage significantly higher than the national average.

For the 2011-2012 school year, about 52 percent of public school principals in the United States were women. The long-term trend, both locally and nationally, shows more women, and more women of color, working in leadership roles in education.

The numbers of female and minority superintendents are much smaller, but also increasing.

“Gender in school leadership has garnered attention in recent years as the percentage of school administrators becomes increasingly female,” writes Troy Dan Costellow in his 2011 dissertation, “The Preferred Principal: Leadership Traits, Behaviors, and Gender Characteristics School Teachers Desire in a Building Leader.”

“Historically viewed as a man’s domain,” Costellow continues, “Women have made tremendous gains in obtaining positions in school administration. This may be due to the evolution of cultural norms for women in the workplace, or to the shift for school leaders to be less of a building manager and more of a relationship and culture-building mentor.

During the 1993-1994 school year, about 35 percent of all public school principals in the U.S. were women.

For the 1999-2000 school year, women accounted for about 44 percent of public school principals across the nation.

Looking at race and ethnicity, among all public school principals in 2011-2012, about 80 percent were listed as white, 10 percent African-American, seven percent Hispanic and three percent “other.”

In New Orleans during the 1979-1980 school year (the first-year data is available on Louisiana Department of Education website), women accounted for 37 percent of public school principals. African-American women represented 23 percent of all principals.

After that, the LDOE began collecting leadership data divided into two categories: District Admini­strators and School Administrators. “District” administrators include superintendents and assistant super­intendents as well as “supervising instructors.” “School” administrators include principals and assistant principals.

Nationwide, the number of female and minority superintendents has steadily increased over the past few decades. Studies also show that females receive comparable pay as their male counterparts in educational leadership roles. Private schools show a larger gender pay gap.

Latoye Aisha Brown, an assistant principal at Audubon Charter School, said that she sees widening opportunities for women – and African-American women – in leadership roles in education.

Doors have opened for people passionate about making a difference in education that were not open before, Brown said. There are more and varied paths to leadership, she noted, “and ways to put leadership into action that did not exist before.”

Brown is also in the midst of researching the topic from a longer historical perspective (starting in the 1860’s), and an overall trend she identifies as a higher than average percentage of Black women in leadership roles in New Orleans.

In Orleans Parish in 1989-90, women made up 46 percent of school administrators. African-American women accounted for 26 percent of all school administrators. In 1999-2000, women made up 62 percent of school administrators, with African-American women holding 52 percent of the positions.

In 2004-2005, 69 percent of school administrators were women, and 62 percent were African-American women.

The most recent year of data on the state’s website, 2010-2011, lists a total of 41 school administrators employed by the Orleans Parish School Board. Of those, 65 percent were female and 39 percent African-American females.

Brown noted the significant alteration that reform also brought to the job description of principal or assistant principal.

Times have changed because the job of a leader has changed so drastically,” she said.

Brown notes that in the new privatized education landscape that dominates New Orleans, the principals have needed an “entirely new skill set,” and have to often play the role of both a business leader and a school leader.

With each charter school acting as its own district, or part of a small district (ranging from two schools to seven), things like food service and transportation are now under the purview of the individual school leaders as opposed to a large, centralized district.

There’s now marketing, making payroll, and facility maintenance to worry about. “All of the sudden, you’re not just an educational leader, you are a business person,” Brown said.

But Brown said she sees that pendulum swinging back to separating some of those duties, though she acknowledges a school now requires both educational leadership and business leadership to be successful.

And while Brown sees unique new opportunities to lead, she also identified areas of concern in the reform landscape.

Brown said it is important to “think about the life cycle of the professional teacher.” There is a difference between teachers who view the job as a life profession and those who have a personal agenda to fulfill, she noted.

And, while by nature privatizing education means turning schools into businesses, Brown stresses the need to “always focus on the school as an institution of learning and not an institution of business.” There is a business aspect, she said, but first and foremost it is a school.

In the fragmented landscape in Orleans Parish, an examination of leadership roles is much more complex than solely looking at school principals or district superintendents.

The Recovery School District (RSD) represents the nation’s first entirely privatized urban school district, and with that the leadership structure has entirely changed.

Each charter school acts as either its own district, or is part of a larger “mini” district.

There are many more leadership jobs, with each charter school or Charter Management Organ­ization (CMO) often employing a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or executive director alongside numerous other highly-compensated positions, such as a Chief Operating Officer or Chief Academic Officer.

Of the current CEO’s or executive directors of the network charter management organizations (more than one school), 42 percent are female. Of the females in the top leadership position, 60 percent are African-American women.

Of the eight total male CEO’s or executive directors (one network has co-executive directors), there is one African-American man (12 percent.).

In 2009, The Times-Picayune published a list with the heading, “Principal Salaries Skyrocket in the Free Market.” The preface to the list of the city’s school leaders notes that “With dozens of New Orleans charter school boards of directors now in control of hiring and setting salaries, the pay for public school principals has jumped substantially, with a handful making as much or more than is typical for a district superintendent. In the process, a new kind of executive position has emerged for leaders who oversee principals at multiple schools operating under one charter board.”

While for the 2011-2012 school year the national average annual salary for a principal was $90,500, the New Orleans experiment has made many a school leader much wealthier.

Topping the list for the Times-Picayune’s 2008-2009 list was Lusher Charter School CEO Kathy Reidlinger, with a salary of $203,559.

While poverty and a history of disinvestment characterize New Orleans’ history as an urban public school district, it is important to note that Lusher falls in the category of selective admissions school.

The challenges faced by open enrollment schools are inevitably far greater.

The selective admissions schools in New Orleans set their own criteria for admissions, accepting only the students they want. Incongruously, they are rated on the same grading scale as schools that are open to all children.

Of the 89 principals on the 2008-2009 list, 58 percent were female.

New Orleans CityBusiness recently published a list of the highest paid charter school employees in leadership positions from 2012.

At the top was Choice Foundation executive director Mickey Landry with a total annual compensation of $258,007. Reidlinger was second on the list, with a total compensation of $316,306 (second because she had lower “reported” compensation.)

Of the 48 pleaders on the City Business list earning over $100,000 in 2012, 50 percent were female.

The lucrative new education “business“ in New Orleans raises the question: – especially because of the use of public money – “Who approves these skyrocketing salaries at ‘nonprofit’ charter schools?” The answer is the un-elected boards governing each charter school or CMO.

Thus the leadership system – particularly related to fiscal and general accountability – is further complicated by these appointed boards.

The boards are designed to combine various expertise from both the public and private sector, and the gender composition varies widely.

Out of 34 current CMO boards in New Orleans, (RSD and Orleans Parish School Board), an average 44 percent of the board members are female. Data regarding the racial makeup of the boards is not available.

The state BESE board, both elected and appointed, is 73 percent female. The elected OPSB is 43 percent female.

Jefferson Parish (a very different educational landscape from Orleans) recently appointed the first African-American woman, Michelle Blouin-Williams, as acting superintendent over the state’s largest school district.

Blouin-Williams, who began her career in Jefferson Parish about 25 years ago as a teacher, said that her classroom experience was key to her desire to make a broader impact and move her in the direction of leadership roles.

Her fundamental goal of improving the education environment for students never changed, she said. “I wanted my kids to grow and thrive inside those four walls, and those four walls got wider.”

Blouin-Williams stresses the importance of collaboration, communication, and providing the necessary support for teachers. “Teachers have to be provided the tools to do the job,” she said.

Blouin-Williams said that she has seen an increase in female leaders in education, especially over the past decade, and that “Jefferson Parish embraces female leadership.”
During the 2010-2011 school year in Jefferson Parish (the most recent data available), 71 percent of school administrators were female, and 80 percent of district administrators were female.

According to Costellow’s dissertation, researcher Bernard M. Bass “found that women leaders were rated significantly higher than men by their subordinates on several factors that could be considered critical to educational organizations. These female leaders were rated higher than men in idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration, resulting in more effective subordinates who expressed greater satisfaction in the workplace. These qualities can successfully influence a student’s learning ability, which may explain the success of women leaders in educational organizations.”

Blouin-Williams said she holds the title of the first African-American acting superintendent (a decision has not yet been made for a permanent superintendent) with “pride and honor.” She said she’s happy to see the diversity of the district represented at every level.”

While female leaders, and African-American female leaders, continue to appear strongly represented in Orleans Parish education leadership roles, the story is very different for classroom teachers.

When all public school teachers were fired following Hurricane Katrina and the rapid, involuntary takeover of the majority of New Orleans’ public schools, res­earchers identified a major blow to the city’s Black middle class. Jobs in education had been a significant part of economic mobility for the city’s majority African-American population.

According to The Cowen In­stitute for Public Education Initiatives, the percentage of minority teachers across New Orleans public schools dropped from 60 percent to 54 percent between 2010 and 2013.

In 1989-1990, the state lists a population of teachers in Orleans Parish that was comprised of 59 percent African-American females, and 61 percent in 1999-2000.

In 2004-2005, African-American women made up 58 percent of the public school teacher workforce.

With drastically reduced numbers, the state lists an OPSB teacher workforce with 53 percent African-American women in 2005-2006, and 44 percent in 2006-2007. In 2008-2009, the number drops to 34 percent, and the state’s data shows the number of white and African-American teachers as neck and neck: of the females, there were 247 Black teachers and 242 white teachers. Of the males, there were 104 Black teachers and 103 white teachers. There were 20 Hispanic teachers and six Asian teachers.

In 2009-2010, both white male and female teachers surpass the numbers of African-American male and female teachers. The major shift in teacher workforce demographics is repeated for 2010-2011, when the number of African-American female teachers drops to 33 percent.

While the New Orleans situation is undoubtedly unique, minority teachers nationwide are also dropping in numbers. According to a December 2014 article in the Hechinger Report by Alexandria Neason: “Nationwide, we have a teacher diversity problem. This year, for the first time in our country’s history, a majority of public school students are children of color. But most teachers—82 percent in the 2011-2012 school year—are white. That figure hasn’t budged in almost a decade.

The knee-jerk response is to blame the minority teacher shortage on inadequate recruitment efforts. But key data suggests that we also have a largely unacknowledged and unaddressed problem with retention. In other words, our schools are churning and burning teachers of color at unconscionably high rates.”

Whether in the classroom or at the top, both Brown and Blouin-Williams agree that a career in education is not an easy one. And if anything, it’s getting more challenging.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Brown said, regarding advice she would give to young people considering the vocation. “It is a career that is extra rewarding, but you will share many tears on the journey. Keep in mind what your overall goal is, and be okay if the only one who approves of the goal is your self. It’s a career that cannot and should not be about external reward,” she said. “Be sure that you are doing the job with a higher purpose in mind.”

This article originally published in the March 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.