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Learn Issues Report Calling for Overhaul of Principal Training, Proposes New Pay Structure Tied to Performance CITING A REPORT FINDING THAT PRINCIPALS in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are undertrained and ill-prepared to implement the sweeping reforms required to improve student achievement, LEARN recently called on the District to radically restructure its selection, training, assessment and pay for principals. The report, titled "Fundamental Principles: A Conceptual Framework for a New Generation of Principals," recommends a series of changes designed to strengthen school-site management in an increasingly decentralized LAUSD, including the creation of special academies to train both new and veteran principals. If adopted, the recommendations also could lead to a dramatic increase in interventions to remove poorly performing principals, as well as greater rewards for top performers. LEARN submitted the report earlier to members of the LAUSD School Board and Superintendent Ruben Zacarias to use as a model for restructuring principal training and management, LEARN also has proposed the report to Governor Gray Davis and the State Legislature as a blueprint for implementing statewide education improvement programs. "We have begun to take the right steps toward improving student achievement by beginning to decentralize the district and empower principals to act like true leaders of their own schools," said Mike Roos, President and CEO of LEARN. "Now we need to properly train motivate our principals to be effective executives who deliver the quality education our children deserve. Great principals should earn ample rewards, while poor principals must be forced to improve their performance or step aside for leaders who can deliver results." LEARN worked with its volunteer consulting team to study the best management practices in the field and develop a comprehensive new model for selecting, training, assessing and paying principals. The model will enable them to become better managers and help all school stakeholders to rid the system of chronically poor performers. The model's four core areas of focus include the following: Professional Development: Require all principals to master a core set of competencies and continually update these to remain effective leaders. New hires would be required to attend a "Principals Academy," and current principals would attend an Administrative Academy for ongoing professional development. The district's recently formed training program focuses only on principals hired after July 1996 and has other limitations. Leadership: Require all principals - many of whom have risen from the teacher ranks and have not received sufficient management training - to strengthen their management and technical skills. Systemic Changes: Update the certification and employment structure for principals, including the new roles and responsibilities. Accountability: Strengthen accountability to meet California's 10-year goal of bringing overall student achievement up to grade level. Authored by a volunteer team of five current and retired LAUSD principals, the report strongly criticizes the District's present structure for principals as overly bureacratic and out of step not only with modern management standards, but with its own mandated reform programs that emphasize decentralization. The report also contends that the District's pay structure for principals, which stresses years of service over performance, hinders the attraction and retention of top candidates. Accountability: Strengthen accountability to meet California's 10-year goal of bringing overall student achievement up to grade level. "Our jobs have become more complex than ever," said Howard M. Lappin, principal of the James A. Foshay Learning Center, one of the five principals who helped research and write the report. "Principals need access to better management training and a more equitable pay structure based on performance if we want to succeed in raising student achievement across the District. We have joined this effort because the District faces a crisis of principal leadership." Yvonne Chan, principal of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, added: "Each of us has seen the enormous, positive impact that good principals can have on a school and, conversely, the tremendous harm that poorly performing principals can cause to school morale and student achievement. We need to address this issue now." In addition to Lappin and Chan, the principals who authored the report include: Alfredo Tarin, administrative coordinator, Office of School Reform for the LAUSD, and former principal, Mulholland Middle School (LEARN); Ruth P. Bunyan, advisor, Polytechnic North Hollywood Cluster, and retired principal, Roscoe Elementary (LEARN); and Juanita J. Manning, principal, El Oro Way Elementary School (LEARN). Created in 1991, LEARN is a education reform agent dedicated to improving student achievement in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation. With more than half of the District's 668 K-12 schools in various stages of implementing LEARN's principles of reform, LEARN is also one of the country's 14 largest public education reform efforts.