Principal Success and Perceptions of Organizational Constraint in City Schools: A Multi-Site Case Study.

This study examined three inner-city public elementary school principals whose schools had most significantly improved across a 2-year period as measured by a district-wide index of performance, investigating their perceptions of organizational constraint and their resulting practices. The performance index was obtained using students' SAT-9 standardized test scores, student and teacher attendance, retention rates, and percentage of students who scored below basic on their SAT-9 tests. Interviews were conducted with principals, school teacher leaders, and subdistrict leaders. Results revealed several common themes among the principals, their working partners, and the school district. However, there was distinct variation among principals, lead teachers, and subdistrict leaders in their reports of organizational constraint on principals' autonomy. Recurring themes included the integral importance of the principal to school success; constraints on resources, time, and communication; the relationship between the school and its subdistrict; and the overall emphasis on results as the prime determinant of principal and school success. The most important variable in principal autonomy was the relation between the school and the subdistrict office and, in particular, the relationship between the principal and the subdistrict leader. Appended are principal profiles. (Contains 31 references.) (SM)