The Principal's Office: A Social History of the American School Principal

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I wrote this book while serving as chair of my university’s Department of Educational Leadership, which, as it turned out, was the perfect setting for thinking about school principals. My department offers an excellent master’s and licensure program for aspiring school principals, and my observations of those brave and energetic students, and the former school administrators who serve as their faculty, taught me more about the great possibilities of school leadership than could any library. I am especially grateful to and admiring of professors Steve Thompson, Kathy Mecoli, Larry Boggess, Ray Terrell, Michael Dantley, and Jim Burchyett, all former school administrators , who extend their commitment to progressive education by preparing future generations of school leaders. Also helpful in my thinking was my role as department chair, which is the higher education version of the principalship : a middle managerial position with fast-moving, multifaceted tasks that range from addressing long-term university policy demands to responding to immediate student and faculty needs. The work is intense, complicated, and exhausting, and for good reason is the position grimly observed as the most difficult and thankless position on campus. Yet I found the work personally rewarding and exciting, and those nine years in the chair’s office gave me a closer sense of, and admiration for, the work of K-12 school principals. The historical records of school principals are not easily identifying or accessible, and I am grateful to the guidance of staff in a number of libraries, cited in the selected bibliography at the end of this volume. Many thanks to the Albert Shanker Educational Research Fellowship, offered in conjunction with the American Federation of Teachers, which allowed me to spend three lovely winter days of research at the Walter Reuther Library, Detroit, Michigan. The staff at King Library, Miami University were exceptionally helpful as always. Although this is a national study of American school principals, my work has been enlightened by collaborative work with international scholars who have provided new perspectives to my analysis. I send special thanks to my colleagues at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education; the national history of education societies of Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Australia-New Zealand; the Kolkata ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, India; and the editorial staff at the Journal of Educational Administration and History. As always, many scholars and colleagues helped in the research and writing of this book. Many of those people are recognized in my notes. I also want to thank Jackie Blount, Dan Golodner, Elliott Gorn, Bob Hampel, Lauri Johnson, Judith Kafka, Craig Kridel, Catherine Lugg, and especially Wayne Urban, and my department colleagues Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Richard Quantz. The American History of Education Society has been an intellectual and professional home base for this and all of my scholarly work. Finally, none of this could have happened without John Bercaw. This book is dedicated to the future generation, especially to my nieces and nephews. May we live and grow as our ancestors have taught us to, by choosing careers that make a difference in people’s lives. ...