High School Principals

In 1969 Arthur Vidich and Charles McReynolds collaborated on a unique study of the challenges facing New York City's high school principals when faced with integrating black and Hispanic students into the school system. The study, High School Principals Study Seminar, funded by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), found that the twenty three principals they interviewed were fighting a losing game of public relations with community expectations of educational reform far greater than they could deliver. According to Vidich and McReynolds, the principals fell into the role of the apologists for the status quo and resented, and indeed were unwilling to accept, the criticisms received from the teacher's union, the public and outside experts.

This study, although almost fifty years old, provides insights into the occupational biases of school administrators who routinely get absorbed into the tasks of school administration at the expense of serving as "principal teachers" providing experimental education program more appropriate to the cultural and social needs of lower income black and Hispanic students.

The crisis of New York City's education for lower income blacks and Hispanics was compounded by the flight of white middle class New Yorkers to the suburbs and for those whites who remained in the city, the placement of their children in private schools.  The authors argue that the city's principals became ensnared in the bureaucracy of education and lost sight of the need for experimental education. Perhaps, more telling the principals became the defenders of the status quo finding fault with their detractors rather than with the need for school reform. Angered that their professionalism was maligned in the press, the principals failed to get beyond reactionary strategies reflecting their past understandings of what educational reforms worked best. Yet public expectations of educational reform went far beyond merely fixing school curriculum - black activists expected an elimination of social inequality, structural forms of racism (i.e., housing segregation) and equal employment opportunity.

This classic case study of New York City principals during the height of the school integration crisis reveals the degree to which high school education remains one of the most politicized functions of local government in America. Any teacher seeking advancement to an administrative role within their local school system would be well advised to read this study before considering becoming a school principal.