The Principal Principle

It's 7:15 in the morning and Al Penna has already been on the job for an hour. Standing in the gated entryway of Binghamton High School in upstate New York, the veteran principal—about to celebrate his 60th birthday—greets hundreds of bleary-eyed teens by name. "How are we today, Louis?" "Good morning, Chris!" "Congratulations on the win, Jennifer!" During the next few hours, Penna presides over meetings on school safety and senior awards, signs a contract for graduation photos and handles staff complaints about crackling walkie-talkies. He visits one class aimed at keeping potential dropouts in school and another where the assignment is to read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. He checks in on students laboring over the state's yearly English as a Second Language (ESL) exam. "Kurdistan," he says, quietly pointing to one student, and then, "Somalia, Eastern Europe, a few from Puerto Rico." He even happily chows down on his favorite cafeteria lunch: gravy-doused roast beef on white bread with mashed potatoes and corn on the side.

At almost every stop, Penna points out how Binghamton and the high school have changed since he walked these same hallways as a student in the 1960s. There's a new and much more diverse population with increasing numbers of low-income and foreign-born students, growing community pressure to guarantee college- or work-ready graduates and a blizzard of government-mandated tests that gobble up an ever-larger chunk of the school day. Getting kids from freshman year to graduation has never been tougher. Penna knows that even that often-elusive diploma isn't enough anymore. Some postgraduate schooling has become essential to earning a middle-class income; that means adding higher-level courses like the International Baccalaureate (IB) or Advanced Placement (AP) program to an already packed curriculum in order to prepare students for college.

So much goes into making a high school great: excellent teaching, vibrant student populations, creative classes, strong extracurriculars. The NEWSWEEK Challenge Index measures one: the number of IB and AP tests students take. But just as important is the person who leads the school. Good principals may seem unlikely superheroes—unless you're a student, teacher or parent. They set the tone for what happens from the moment the opening bell rings and can turn a troubled school around with a combination of vision, drive and very hard work. It's a 24/7 job. "Schools aren't just about just reading, writing and arithmetic anymore," says Penna. "School faculties now have the additional roles of mentor, adviser and quasi parent."

Principals also have to be politicians, crisis managers, cheerleaders, legal experts, disciplinarians, entertainers, coaches and persuasive evangelists for their school's educational mission. Add to that already daunting list the task of statistician, thanks to reams of data required by the federal No Child Left Behind law and local testing. "Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in data," says Jill Martin, the principal of Doherty High School in Colorado Springs, Colo., who won the 2007 Principal of the Year title from the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Who can fill that intimidating job description? "It certainly helps to be somebody who doesn't need a lot of sleep," jokes Martin, 61, who, like Penna, routinely works 12- and 14-hour days and makes sure to show up at school plays and games on weekends. Endless energy does seem to be a requirement, as does a talent for getting the best out of a large team. "It no longer works to be the dictator or the sage on the stage," says Martin. "You have to be a leader of instructional leaders. You have to be someone who can really motivate people to go the extra mile because the job of a teacher is far more difficult and complex than when I started teaching." A good principal has to be up to speed on constantly expanding education research and know how to apply the latest data. Above all, says Martin, you have to be someone who understands teenagers' needs. Although the demands of the school have changed in her 38 years as an educator, Martin says kids are the same: "They still want someone to care about them. The principal has to be someone who really loves kids and understands what it takes to motivate teachers to change every child's life."

Finding those leaders is harder than ever. Many baby boomers, who now hold the majority of the jobs, are retiring in the next few years. Other veteran principals are leaving because of school reform or restructuring efforts or simply because they no longer want to do the work. It's estimated that in some areas, 60 percent of principals will leave their positions in the next five years. That's why there's a new focus on finding and training the best of the next generation for these jobs, including recruits from other fields. These efforts range from New York City's privately subsidized Leadership Academy to mentorship programs in districts around the country. A recent report by researchers from Stanford University and the Finance Project, a public-policy group, found that the most effective programs actively recruited candidates, provided instruction from expert principals and included well-supervised internships.