What’s the next career move for an assistant principal?
It seems logical that assistant principals would apply to become principals. Assistant principals develop critical leadership skills and gain firsthand knowledge of how a school is run before they take the next step in their careers. From running professional learning communities to budgeting and helping shape school culture, assistant principals are exposed to most facets of the principal’s job.
New research, though, points to a different reality: Over two-thirds of APs don’t apply to become principals. The study also shows that assistant principals of color—who now outnumber their white counterparts in the job—wait longer than white APs to apply for the principalship. Women of color wait the longest.
The researchers of the study, titled “Ready but Waiting: The Role of Gender, Race, and Experience in Principal Applications,” used an administrative human resources data set from a large southeastern American state, which spans from 2014 to 2022. Researchers examined which of 1,121 APs were most likely to apply for the principalship and how race, gender, experience, and the type of schools they work in impact when they apply for a promotion.
“It surprised me that only a third of our sample of APs ever submitted an application for the principalship, which means that two-thirds of the assistant principals in the district were not seeking promotion at all,” said Lauren Bailes, an associate professor at the School of Education at the University of Delaware and one of the lead authors of the study.
“[The share] was even smaller for APs of color. Just 24% were ever putting themselves forward to be promoted to principal.”
Compared with that, over 37% of white APs had applied for a promotion, the study found.
Sarah Guthery, Bailes’ co-author, said she was surprised to see how long men and women of color waited before applying. “We’re talking years and years of instructional experience and experience in the classroom [teaching].”
Overall, the study found that white male APs have the least amount of experience—five years—before they first apply to be promoted to the principalship. In comparison, a female AP of color typically waits over a decade before applying.
These findings confirm what researchers have previously found about the AP to principal pipeline: Although just under a quarter of all APs are people of color, they make up only 19% of the principalship, according to a research paper released by the Wallace Foundation in 2021.
Bailes and Guthery noted that previous research shows there’s a “real disparity” between the types of AP who put themselves up for a promotion.
“An interesting next question is what are the systems around [APs] that are giving signals that your application would not be welcome or it’s not your time yet,” said Guthery.
Education Week spoke to Bailes and Guthery about barriers in the principal pipeline and how districts could build a more diverse pool of school leaders.
What are the factors that you think hold APs back from applying to the principalship?
Bailes: People of color, especially women, are slotted into a particular kind of AP-ship. Quite often, their role is more focused on facilities, discipline, and managing a part of the budget. It’s not often instructional leadership, the kind of skill that eventually gets tapped for building-level leadership. That’s one part of it. The kind of AP work that you get slotted into can really make it very difficult to be promoted to the next stage.
We’ve heard this directly from people who have responded to our studies. One, you get so good at doing that thing that it’s impossible to move you out of that. For example, one woman [AP] I interviewed handles 60 discipline referrals a day. Nobody else wants to do it, and nobody else can do it, but it means she doesn’t get to move into a more instructional-leadership training role.
When people are starting to ask around about the succession plan, they may see that this AP is great at discipline, but she doesn’t know anything about observing teachers. That’s part of the system that has been created around APs . … I think this is an ongoing conversation in our part of the field, whether it is a stepping stone or whether it’s a place you end a career.
Guthery: It’s also about who gets tapped to become a principal. We have heard, anecdotally, from principals, that sometimes there can be a quiet system of giving people encouragement and letting them know you would be right for a role. An interesting piece of this is how many people are ever truly invited to apply [for a principal position] or how many of these applications come in just self-nominated.
The principalship has become a difficult and complex role. Do you think that deters APs from applying?
Bailes: It’s a hard thing to disentangle. Yes, the job is hard for some people, but for some people, it’s less hard because they don’t go home to care work or the same amount of care work. In some cases, the job is hard because principals are subject to additional scrutiny. It’s one thing to say that the job is fundamentally challenging because of the complexity of the work. It is a second thing to say that the kind of evaluation that you get, the kind of life that you’re able to live outside of this work, and the kind of support available to you are very different based on your gender and race. That can impact how an AP views the principal’s workload.
Why are women and men of color waiting longer than their peers to apply? Or why are they not applying at all?
Bailes: We have some research about [male educators of color]. … It starts in the classroom. The research about black male teachers shows they’re usually one of the only ones in their schools. They experience isolation, and many educators of color have to carry the equity work on top of their teaching load. What we found in our demotion study [quoted earlier] was that black male principals are the first group to be demoted. And they’re put into those quote, unquote, hard-to-lead, hard-to-staff contexts, with high proportions of students who live in poverty, high proportions of students of color. They were demoted within the shortest amount of time.
How can district and school leaders tap or create a more diverse pool of principal candidates?
Bailes: If you are the AP seeking promotion, then seek promotion. Put your application in and tell people you’re interested. Use the levers available to you to signal to the system that you are qualified and that you want that job. The system is not designed to signal your readiness to you, so you need to signal your readiness to it.
If you are the principal who is mentoring an AP that you think would make a good principal, go beyond mentoring and sponsor them. That means talking about them in the rooms that they’re not in.
This goes beyond just like shadowing and just them doing their job. You need to set goals collaboratively with them and provide them with the experiences they’re going to need to be visible.
Guthery: I would also say for district leaders, they need to examine who is [in the pipeline], and [do a] critical examination of desirable qualities. Does that always look like the high school football coach? Does it always look like a “strong leader” in ways that really preclude other people from ever looking that part.
To people coming up [the principal ladder], I would tell them to have a lot of conversations in and out of their district. One thing we found about the demotion paper was that there was a strong group of white men who would leave the principalship strategically for another district and take what we termed as a demotion, but they were taking a strategic assistant principalship for more pay and better possibility of advancement. I would encourage candidates to really have a critical eye on not just what possibilities are in front of you but also for opportunities outside of their districts.