Fink and Brayman EAQ42 - 1

Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2006) 62-89

10.1177/0013161X05278186
Educational
Fink, Brayman
Administration
/ SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
Quarterly SUCCESSION ARTICLE
School Leadership Succession and

the Challenges of Change
Dean Fink
Carol Brayman
Background: Throughout the Western world, the fallout from the standards/standardization
agenda has resulted in potential leaders questioning educational leadership as a career
path. Moreover, the aging of the baby boom generation has created a shortage of quali-
fied principals in many educational jurisdictions. Policy makers have responded to these
twin pressures by initiating major programs to identify, recruit, and prepare future lead-
ers. Leadership succession, whether planned or unplanned, has become an accelerated
and cumulative process that is including people of increasing levels of inexperience. Suc-
cession is now a chronic process rather than an episodic crisis.
Purpose: This article argues that succession is not the key issue. What is crucial is the de-
gree of autonomy that principals can exercise on behalf of their school community.
Findings: During the 30 years of the Change Over Time? study (described elsewhere),
we have seen this autonomy eroded to the point that leaders have become managers of
systems’agendas rather than serving their schools and students. Staff members have be-
come cynical about both leaders and leadership succession in the face of cumulative and
accelerated succession and perceived changes in their principals’ roles and obliga-
tions—increasing the degree of resistance to change. Only when young people begin to
see that leadership roles in schools once again make a difference to students learning not
just test scores, then quality leaders will emerge and effective succession planning poli-
cies developed.
Keywords: succession; principal mobility; trajectories; learning organization; stan-

dards agenda
T here is increasing evidence of a potential leadership crisis in many West-

ern educational jurisdictions with the potential to undermine their school
improvement initiatives. Disenchantment of existing leaders with the
standards/standardization agenda and demographic changes as the baby
boom generation moves on have produced an increasingly rapid turnover of
school leaders and an insufficient pool of capable, qualified, and prepared
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X05278186
© 2006 The University Council for Educational Administration
62
Fink, Brayman / SCHOOL LEADERSHIP SUCCESSION 63
replacements (Brooking, Collins, Court, & O’Neill, 2003; Earley, Evans,

Collarbone, Gold, & Halpin, 2002; Gronn & Rawling-Sanaei, 2003;
Williams, 2001). In the United States, the National Association of Secondary
School Principals (NASSP; Quinn, 2002) reported that the average age of
principals in 1993-1994 was 47.7, with 37.0% older than age 50, 53.6%
between ages 40 and 49, and 9.5% age 39 or younger. Half of the school dis-
tricts surveyed in 2000 reported that there was a shortage of qualified candi-
dates. “This shortage occurred among rural schools (52%), suburban schools
(45%), and urban schools (47%). These shortages of qualified principal can-
didates also occurred at all levels: elementary (47%), junior high/middle
(55%), and senior high (55%)” (Quinn, 2002, p. 1). NASSP attributes this
failure to attract quality leaders to
increased job stress, inadequate school funding, balancing school manage-

ment with instructional leadership, new curriculum standards, educating an
increasingly diverse student population, shouldering responsibility that once
belonged at home or in the community, and then facing possible termination if
their schools don’t show instant results. (p. 1)
A similar pattern exists in Canada and particularly in Ontario. A study by

the Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC) shows that close to 60% of principals
and 30% of vice or assistant principals in elementary and secondary schools
in public school boards will retire by 2005. By 2010, more than 80% of prin-
cipals and about 50% of vice principals will retire. The study forecasts that
1,900 Ontario schools out of about 3,200 in the English component of the
public system will have a new principal by 2004. Moreover, the study reports
that close to 8,000 teachers with principals and vice/assistant principals’
qualifications are likely to retire by 2005, whereas only 715 teachers have ac-
quired the principals’ qualifications each year on average between 1997 and
2000 (Williams, 2001).
In many schools in Ontario where school boards rotate principals from
school to school on a regular basis, teachers see their principals come and go
like revolving doors—and quickly learn how to resist and ignore their
leader’s efforts (Macmillan, 2000). The result is that school improvement
becomes like a set of bobbing corks, with many schools rising under one set
of leaders, only to sink under the next. The cumulative result is that a school’s
efforts to sustain “deep learning” experiences for all its students are severely
limited (Hargreaves & Fink, 2000).
A similar phenomenon can occur in jurisdictions with high principal
mobility. Although the extent and effects on schools of the considerable
interdistrict and interstate mobility of administrators in the United States is
underresearched, Pounder and her colleagues suggested that these transitions
64 Educational Administration Quarterly
are comparable on a percentage basis to the attrition rates of school adminis-

trators and contribute to the perception of a supply crisis (Pounder, Galvin, &
Shepherd, 2003). If, as they suggest, administrators’ mobility is greater than
for other educational professionals and comparable on a percentage basis to
normal attrition rates, then it would seem to follow that many U.S. states
share the Ontario predicament of a rapid turnover of school leaders that
results in episodic change efforts (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). This report on the
situation in the United States, when combined with similar studies from other
countries such as Australia (Gronn & Rawling-Sanaei, 2003), New Zealand
(Brooking et al., 2003), and the United Kingdom (Draper & McMichael,
2003), raise questions not only of supply and demand but also of the degree
and extent to which the nature of educational leadership has changed over
time as well as the effects on educational change of the rapid turnover of
educational leaders through attrition, mobility, or planned rotation.
In recent years, studies have focused on educational leadership as a cul-
ture, a collective phenomenon distributed across space. But very little atten-
tion has been given to this equally significant issue of how leadership is
arranged and articulated over time. This article draws on the Change Over
Time? study to look at shifts in the nature of leadership, and particularly the
role of principals during the span of the study, and the effects of these shifts
on the schools and their efforts at school improvement. The article begins
with a brief review of relevant literature on the changing nature of educa-
tional leadership to provide a context for a more in-depth examination of the
literature on the nature and effects of leadership succession within and
beyond education and the forms of knowledge and experience that accom-
pany and influence the succession process among those who undergo it. This
literature review is followed by a short methodological account of the aspects
of the project design that are most pertinent to the analysis of leadership
issues. Three contrasting school cases are then presented in relation to the
issues and concepts emerging from the literature review. The article then con-
cludes with a cross-case discussion, along with implications for understand-
ing school change in relation to the orchestration of leadership succession.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The process of principal succession has a diverse but somewhat discon-

nected body of literature. For example, there is advice on recruitment and
selection processes (Normore, 2001; Pounder & Merrill, 2001), training and
preparation programs (Hart, 1993; Normore, 2001; Sussman, 1986; Warren,
1989), and guidelines for structuring socialization experiences for school
administrators (Leithwood, Steinbach, & Begley, 1992; Pounder & Young,

1996; Wanous, 1980).
One strategy for managing principal succession at the district level is
planned rotation. Aquila (1989) advocated such a policy as a way to encour-
age principals to tackle new challenges. Boesse (1991), in his study in Mani-
toba, contended that rotation rejuvenates principals. Similarly, a few U.S.
studies support the efficiency of principal turnover as a means to promote
school improvement (Hart, 1993; Stine, 1998). For the most part, however,
support for the practice of the regular rotation of principals rests on a basis of
experience and anecdotal evidence rather than on carefully developed em-
pirical studies.
Macmillan’s (2000) study of secondary principals in Ontario provides
insight into the process of leaders’ adaptation to their new settings and the
effects on school staffs. He found that principals take fewer risks as they gain
experience and settle into a school. Macmillan cautioned that “the policy of
regularly rotating principals within a system is a flawed one, perhaps fatally
so. When leadership succession is regular and routinized, teachers are likely
to build resilient cultures which inoculate them against the effects of suc-
cession” (p. 68). This pattern may also apply when the mobility of school
administrators creates rapid leadership transitions. Macmillan concluded
that although routine rotations of principals may help their professional
development, they may also impede improvement efforts in the school. In an
earlier study, Miskel and Cosgrove (1985) found no evidence that principal
rotation increases organizational effectiveness.
Other studies (Davidson & Taylor, 1999; Fauske & Ogawa, 1983) contest
these views and have found that school reform and principals’ succession are
not necessarily incompatible when the new principal’s orientation to change
is similar to the previous principal and when there are strong teacher leaders
committed to the change. Overall, the available research on principal succes-
sion and rotation provides limited and conflicting views on the practice of
leadership succession in schools and suggests the need for thorough research
as a way to guide future policy.
Leadership succession plans connect the identification, recruitment, prep-
aration, placement, induction, and ongoing in-service education of leaders.
Yet the educational literature provides little comprehensive guidance con-
cerning successful leadership succession (Morris, Crowson, Porter-Gehrie,
& Hurwitz, 1984). Hart (1993) is the one important exception. Her two case
studies—one from the perspective of faculty and one from the perspective of
an “outsider” new principal—illustrate how principal succession is a process
of “organizational socialization” of the new leader into the school culture by
the staff. From this perspective, the new leader is inducted into school culture
by means of socialization tactics, stages, contexts, and outcomes. Based on

one of her case-study schools, Hart (1993) introduced the idea of stages in
leadership transitions. She described the leadership transition at this school
as proceeding through four stages—looking ahead, enchantment, disen-
chantment, and equilibrium.
Wenger (1998) offered a more sophisticated stage theory that provides in-
sight into the transition process from one leader to another for both the lead-
ers involved in the transition as well as the school affected. He explains,
Developing a practice requires the formation of a community whose members

can engage with one another and thus acknowledge each other as participants.
As a consequence, practice entails the negotiation of ways of being a person in
that context. . . . The formation of a community of practice is also the negotia-
tion of identities. (p. 149)
Four of Wenger’s (1998) trajectories are particularly appropriate for this

discussion of principals’ succession. Inbound trajectories refer to individuals
who join a community of practice with the “prospect of becoming full partic-
ipants in its practice” (p. 154). Their engagement may be peripheral in the be-
ginning but in time they expect to be an insider. The appropriateness of a new
principal’s inbound trajectory to a new school setting can contribute to his or
her success or failure. Peripheral trajectories never lead to full participation
but are significant to one’s identity. A person who remains permanently on
the periphery, however, runs the risk of becoming marginal to the school’s
community of practice.
Insider trajectories grow and develop over time as one becomes a full
member of a community. The length of time to negotiate this trajectory will
depend on the person and the context. Conversely, outbound trajectories
apply to those who plan or expect to move out of a community at some point.
Wenger explained that what matters to a person and the community left
behind is “how a form of participation enables what comes next” (p. 155).
For a school leader, the question of legacy and of sustainability of important
changes requires renegotiating relationships with the former community.
The noneducational leadership literature offers a helpful road map into
understanding the meaning, operation, and pitfalls of leadership succession.
Business observers contend that organizations must embark on systemic suc-
cession planning programs to replace the departing leaders (Eastman, 1995;
Liebman, Bruer, & Maki, 1996; Rothwell, 2001). Investigations into leadership
succession in the public sector are quite limited (National Academy of Public
Administration, 1997; Schall, 1997). Santora and Sarros (1995) argued that
the long tenure of most public service leaders encourages lack of interest in
leadership succession (Schall, 1997). In general, the noneducation literatures
emphasize the need to connect goal setting, recruitment, development,

accountability practices, and leadership succession. The business literature,
however, defines leadership roles flexibly in terms of what will be required in
the future, rather than limiting its role descriptions to existing competencies.
Conversely, the public service tends to prepare future leaders for existing
jobs. The best business organizations, argued Mintzberg (2004), have a
developmental approach to leadership. Those companies that develop their
own leaders focus on core purposes and values while remaining open
to change and opportunities (Collins & Porras, 2002). Yet in the public sec-
tor and particularly in education, leadership succession appears to be more
serendipitous.
By looking at leadership and multiple leadership successions over time,
the Change Over Time? study examines the ways in which the rapid and
sometimes repeated transitions from one principal to another affect the cul-
ture and commitment of school staff and the capacity of schools to achieve
and sustain lasting improvement.
METHOD
Leadership was one of six areas of analysis around which researchers

within the Change Over Time? study shaped detailed case studies for each of
the project schools and provided rich information on the effects of leadership
transitions in each of the schools. (Full methodological details are provided
in the opening article in this special issue by Hargreaves and Goodson.)
Design features specific to the leadership aspect of the study are described
here.
Researchers asked each participant: “How did (the school) change and
remain the same during the time that you were there? How did you feel about
that?” This question elicited a great deal of discussion about the changing
nature of leadership, particularly the principals’ leadership. In addition, the
open-ended nature of the interview schedule described in the opening article
in this collection (Hargreaves & Goodson) evoked considerable commentary
on the tenure of various principals by teachers. Although interviews with
administrators were not part of the original research design, it became appar-
ent as the research proceeded that leadership was an important aspect of the
study. The research team conducted 20 additional interviews with present
and past principals of four of the schools in the study. Interviewers asked such
questions as “How did you become the kind of principal you are (were)?” “In
your own work as a principal, did it change over that period, for example, the
way you spent your time?” “Can you say something about how you worked
with parents over the time you were at the school?” “How did outside forces
shape the school’s directions?” From these data, as well as teachers’ re-
sponses to the original interview schedule, we have examined principals’
intentions and teachers’ responses and the way in which external social
forces shaped each principal’s leadership. We particularly examined the prin-
cipals’ concerns when they entered their new settings, and their feelings and
observations when they departed. Similarly we reviewed teachers’ reactions
to the same events. From these rather extensive sources, we were able to cap-
ture an in-depth understanding of principals’ leadership and the effects of
principals’ transitions. Two of the following three cases, Talisman Park and
Stewart Heights, were chosen for this article from among the eight longer
cases from the study to provide examples of leadership transitions during a
long period of time. The other school, Blue Mountain, provides an interesting
contrast because it was designed self-consciously as a learning organization.
It tried to sustain its uniqueness by purposefully planning for leadership
succession.
CASES
Talisman Park
Talisman Park is an academic, collegiate-style school that opened in 1920.
The staff successfully saw its mission as preparing students for university.
More than 70% of its students are accepted into universities and colleges. Sit-
uated in an affluent, well-established neighborhood, the school has approxi-
mately 1,200 students and a staff of 75. Staff turnover is very low. Talisman
Park’s traditionally middle-class, White, Anglo-Saxon student population
has become more racially and ethnically diverse during the past 10 years.
From 1919 to 1987, Talisman Park had six principals in 68 years, compared
to the 13-year period between 1987 and 2000 when four principals followed
one another in rapid succession.
The “Rowan” years were the halcyon years in the memory of long-serving
staff. From 1966 to 1974, Bill Rowan led a school “that really had a passion, a
hunger for innovation.” A young geography teacher who later became a prin-
cipal in the school district reminisced,
Here I was a young guy and [Rowan] saw something in me to give me a chance
to assume a position of responsibility. Rowan was visible. He had a very strong
commitment to the school and his kids and the extracurricular program. I ap-
preciate him as a good mentor in the sense of the importance of the interper-
sonal relations between teachers and between teachers and kids. I have been
shaped, and in turn this has helped me to shape other schools because of my
experience.
Just as Rowan inspired this young leader, he helped more than 20 staff
members to achieve significant leadership positions in the district and prov-
ince. Although he was prepared to share power, there is no question that he
was in charge. As one female teacher recalled, “Rowan was a ‘good old boy,’
‘a fatherly type.’” She described promotion meetings in which Rowan might
overrule teachers to assist individual students, especially “a football star”: “It
makes you feel that you don’t have a lot of autonomy in what you are doing.”
Midyear in 1974, he and a number of key staff members left Talisman Park to
open a new school in the district.
His replacement, Harry Arness (1974-1983), was a remote and more
bureaucratic leader than Rowan. As a long-serving department head stated,
“He was a very strange guy. He was a super guy for sports. So long as you
coached or the teams were doing well he was happy.” A female music teacher
who had difficulties with her department head was confronted by Arness and
told that she must leave the school and handed her a list of job openings else-
where. He made no effort to resolve the causes of the dispute or to determine
who was right and who was wrong. He merely sided with his closest subordi-
nate in the line of command, the department head. His arbitrary decision led
to a confrontation involving the union, and eventually the teachers seeking
psychiatric help before Arness reluctantly backed down.
In contrast to Rowan’s buoyant, people-oriented style, Arness’s more for-
mal paternalistic, “by-the-book” approach had a profoundly debilitating
affect on the mission and morale of the staff. Rowan, with his undeniable cha-
risma, was a hard act to follow, and his departure and hiring of key people out
of Talisman Park for his new school reflect his minimal attention to his out-
bound trajectory. It would also appear that Arness and the Talisman Park of
the mid-1970s were poorly matched. His inbound trajectory was at odds with
the school’s “community of practice,” and he remained on its periphery dur-
ing his tenure. In fact, many staff marginalized him by avoiding any contact
with him unless it was absolutely necessary.
Few tears were shed when Arness departed, to be replaced by Fred Laird
in 1983. The same music teacher who had clashed with Arness declared that
Laird was “so wonderful. He knew my problem with the department head
because I went and talked to him all the time,” and indeed Laird did intervene
to improve her working situation. Another woman declared that he was
“good to all of us. He always had an open door policy.” “He could really relate
well to people,” declared a male geography teacher. “Laird could always find
something positive about people and he was very, very good at developing
leadership, delegating, and making people feel good about themselves.” His
departure in 1987 ushered in a period of rapid turnover at Talisman Park. Be-
tween 1987 and 2000, the school had four principals. Bruce Riley lasted only
3 years before his promotion to superintendent. He was followed by Bill
Andrews (1990 to 1995), whom we will meet again when we look at Stewart
Heights; Charmaine Watson (1995-1998); and then Ivor Megson (1998 to
the present). One department head who had worked under five of Talisman
Park’s principals expressed the growing cynicism of many of his colleagues
when he stated,
Rowan (1966-1974) and Arness (1974-1983) were totally committed to the

overall program of the school. When they went into the hiring process, they
knew exactly what they wanted and what they needed. Their number-one focus
was the school. What I noticed, as time went on and principals changed, was
that the principal was less interested in the school and more interested in his
own personal growth. You could tell, as some of these other principals came in,
they spent more time outside the school than they did inside the school, and
right away that was a danger flag for me.
Staff viewed Bill Andrews (1990-1995) like his predecessors Laird and
Riley, as a change agent. An experienced principal, Andrews pushed Talis-
man Park’s school community to confront issues of change in broad concep-
tual and systemic terms as well as pragmatically. He advocated an inclusive
approach to planning and problem solving and involved students in the pro-
cess. He had his strong advocates as the following statement from a counselor
attests. He also “rubbed” some people, especially women, “the wrong way.”
I loved Andrews! Loved him! He was my favorite. Every single day he’d say,
“How are we doing? Are there concerns that we need to know about it? How
are the kids liking this?” He would be out in the parking lot at lunchtime, wan-
dering around the school talking to kids and trying to get to know everybody. I
thought he brought a lot of changes in that were good.
Issues unrelated to his school leadership resulted in the district’s moving

him rather abruptly to the district office to assume a regional role in 1995. The
nature of the move left little time for planning the transition and the new prin-
cipal, Charmaine Watson, had little opportunity to interact with Andrews or
the staff before she assumed the role. Once again outbound knowledge was
ignored.
For Talisman Park, this rapid rotation of principals (and assistant princi-
pals) has made it difficult for school administrators to become an integral part
of the school’s culture and to maintain the momentum of their leadership ef-
forts. Most, it would appear, have remained on a peripheral trajectory, and as

a result, their change efforts tended to be superceded by new initiatives under
a new principal. As one 25-year veteran explained,
Well, again the principal has a specific agenda and that’s what they administer
to and strive to achieve. . . . I think as a principal you have a right to—that your
school is your school and you can take it whichever direction you like. . . . How
we get there is another story.
Many staff members have become reluctant to invest their energies in new
school structures and practices that they anticipate will change again in 2 or 3
years. After five different principals in his tenure at the school, a depart-
ment head concluded that “principals generally come in and they have grand
visions and plans and somewhere along the line . . . they seem to always
have an ulterior motive. Maybe they want to go to another school or be a
superintendent.”
Watson, who replaced Andrews, had taught at Talisman Park before she
became its principal and understood the school’s history and ethos. Many of
the school’s mainly White and middle-class staff members had been at the
school a long time. Almost 30% had been on the faculty in the school for
more than 16 years, 45% for 11 years, and 80% for more than 6 years. A cof-
fee circle of experienced, long-serving teachers met every morning before
school to socialize and to share opinions on government initiatives, school
board policies, and administrators’ decisions. This “circle group” composed,
for the most part, of teachers who taught the core subjects in the curriculum
areas like mathematics, science, and English helped to set the tone for the
school. This group, according to one of the school’s assistant principals, was
an influential subculture within the school that jeopardized the “administra-
tion’s efforts to build morale.” According to a new teacher,
I do go [to the staff room] every now and then. But I find that it is just mostly
gossip. People just go there to complain about the way things are run within ed-
ucation. I think it is important to socialize with the staff. But on a regular basis I
just don’t want to hear all the crap.
This staff group, and the other micro-politically powerful department

heads’ group, had traditionally determined what changes would occur in the
school and what would languish. These groups supported innovations in their
own academic subjects but were skeptical and often cynical about larger
scale reform agendas that altered the essential “grammar” of the school.
Once she became the principal, Charmaine immediately set out to alter the
“balkanized” culture of the school that had produced departmental fiefdoms.
She democratized the school’s decision making by taking major decisions to

the staff as a whole, rather than depending on the heads of department as a
decision-making cabinet. The micro-political power of the circle group and
department heads gradually shifted to the staff as a whole. She distributed
leadership beyond the formal leadership structures and developed a whole-
school strategic school plan that focused on improving assessment strategies
for student work and engaging students in instructional technology. She par-
ticipated actively with staff in professional development activities and took
every opportunity to challenge teachers to diversify their teaching to meet the
changing nature and needs of the school’s students. With key staff members,
Charmaine initiated a strategic plan that involved all the major stakeholders
in the Talisman Park community and developed a statement of purposes for
the school. After 4 years in the school, researchers reported that most staff
members were quite supportive of her directions or at least willing to go
along (Hargreaves et al., 2000). As the first female principal in Talisman
Park’s history, teachers described her leadership style as “open,” “collabora-
tive,” “democratic,” “very relaxed style,” “motherly,” “nurturing,” “warm,”
“nonintrusive,” and “a good listener” who “cares about people.” Watson also
saw herself as being “fair, caring, and encouraging—caring about staff, tak-
ing a stand, pulling things together, really caring about every aspect of school
life, being hands on, encouraging staff to keep learning.” She also felt that she
“brought her own stamp to things” so that “nobody in the school is the bad
guy.” She saw herself as a principal/teacher by “modeling and making things
fine for everyone” because teachers “need to feel safe.” Although some of her
strategies in her early years can be described as instrumental, she gradually
empowered people and distributed leadership opportunities widely as her
tenure progressed.
In spite of her best efforts, however, there remained a small but influential
element of staff, composed largely of long-serving staff that resisted her ef-
forts to develop the school as a learning community. A male teacher who had
related well to Andrews complained, “At times I find that she is direct. At
other times I find that I am second guessing to find out what it is that she really
means.” A female colleague commented that “she is always so busy I feel I’m
infringing on her time.” She went on to comment that
some of the men principals had an open-door policy where we could always go
in if we had to talk about something. But here it is difficult. If we need to go to
speak to the principal, she will look at you as if “I don’t want you here right
now.”
When Charmaine was absent from meetings, their cynicism would occasion-
ally surface. Efforts to develop schoolwide goals, such as integrating com-
puters into the curriculum, often bogged down in issues such as students’
tardiness in arriving at classes. In her own way, she presented a powerful
personal presence in the school, but as the small group of naysayers suggests,
she still had much to accomplish to achieve her goal of building a learning
community that focused on schoolwide issues. Even though she had the cred-
ibility of teaching at Talisman during its “glory” years and was seen by most
staff as a caring and capable leader, she had not yet become an insider. A few
influential staff members never considered her to be part of the school’s
“community of practice.” Unfortunately, she would never get the chance to
work from the inside out—to “sail” the school, “steering from the stern”
rather than “driving the school from the front” as she had during most of her
tenure (Hopkins, 1992).
In June 1998, the West School District experienced a number of unex-
pected retirements among its school leaders. As a result, in July, after school
had adjourned for the summer break, the school district abruptly transferred
Charmaine to a school that was experiencing serious leadership problems.
The district had obviously given little thought to Charmaine’s outbound
knowledge or, for that matter, the inbound knowledge of her successor. The
officials who moved her seemed more concerned to place a principal with
considerable inbound knowledge into a challenging situation than to consoli-
date her 4 years of attempted reform at Talisman Park. She was, in her own
words, “devastated” by the ill-timed move. Charmaine had little opportunity
to draw her tenure to a conclusion or even to say goodbye, although she at-
tempted to attend to her outbound trajectory by arranging with the school
district for the placement of Ivor Megson as the school’s new principal.
Megson’s inbound trajectory included a short stay as assistant principal at
Talisman Park and involvement in a system-sponsored school improvement
program that included Talisman Park. Megson was cognizant of the cul-
tural side of change, but his approach to leadership reflected his engineering
background—rational, managerial, and strategic. His arrival coincided with
significant government-initiated changes hitting the school with their full
force. As one department head explained, the effects of externally imposed
change had significantly altered teachers’ attitudes toward the school and
their principal.
We have had all this other work laid on in terms of curriculum expectations,
management types of expectations, behavioral kinds of expectations—looking
after kids and monitoring halls. People are becoming much more black and
white about “what’s my job, what am I going to do; what am I going to refuse to
do?” And the kind of idea, you did things not because you had to but because
you felt it would be good for the school and for the school tone. People stopped
doing that because we are not getting credit for it—it is not part of what we are
being paid for. People becoming much more militant about that which then
causes more friction because people are being asked to do things that they don’t
want to do or that they don’t have to do. So they refuse it, which then makes Ivor
look bad as a principal, because some things work on basically good will, and
that’s been lost.
In response to the plethora of fiats from the government and these shifting
staff attitudes, Megson abandoned the years of work to change the school’s
culture under Charmaine’s and Andrews’s leadership before her and turned
to the formal leadership structures to ensure compliance with top-down ini-
tiatives. The circle group regained its influence as stressed teachers met to
complain about the latest government requirements, and department heads
once again made most of the important decisions. Like many principals, Ivor
felt that his main responsibility was to protect or buffer his staff from the de-
luge of reforms that descended on the school. He allowed the staff to focus on
only those students who were slightly below the median on the provincial lit-
eracy test to boast achievement and gain a higher ranking for the school. In
the process, teachers tended to provide less assistance to those students most
in need of intensive support in language development but who would not con-
tribute to a positive school language profile. Ironically, Charmaine in her
new school developed a literacy across the curriculum program that did not
achieve the kind of immediate gains of the Talisman Park approach, but
within 3 years, this disadvantaged school achieved the second-highest score
in the district and outpaced the much more socially advantaged Talisman
Park by a considerable distance.
Principals from the school’s earlier days stayed long enough in the school
to move from a peripheral trajectory to become insiders. Leaders like Rowan
and Laird, although both in the “great man” tradition (Gustavson, 1955;
Hook, 1955), were able to influence the school’s community of practice and
sustain not just structural changes but also attitudinal and social changes.
From 1987 to the present, the rapid rotation of principals has created the
revolving door syndrome (Macmillan, 1996), which has resulted in staff
members going along with reform initiatives but withholding total commit-
ment. This case would therefore suggest that principals who intend to sustain
change over time need sufficient time to negotiate their identity within the
school’s community of practice to move from the periphery to become insid-
ers. At the same time, a prolonged stay as an insider could result in compla-
cency and a rigorous defense of the status quo. Virtually all the principals in
this case, regardless of the length of their tenures, were able to involve signifi-
cant numbers of staff members in the pursuit of important educational
changes. Charmaine, for instance, engaged the discretionary commitment of
all but a minority of staff and was approaching insider status at the time of her
departure. What she and her predecessors and their staffs enjoyed was con-
siderable voice in the directions the school would follow. Ivor Megson, how-
ever, inherited a situation in which neither he nor his staff colleagues had any
significant influence in the school’s directions. The district and the provincial
government predetermined the schools goals in the name of educational
reform. Ivor’s job became one of ensuring compliance. The learning commu-
nity that Charmaine was close to achieving disintegrated in the face of these
external forces, and Ivor Megson had no alternative but to use instrumental
strategies to ensure he kept his job.
Stewart Heights
Located in the same school district as Talisman Park, our second case,
Stewart Heights, presents a similar picture to Talisman Park. Stewart Heights
is an old and established collegiate located in what was once a tightly knit,
White, largely Anglo-Saxon rural community. Although the small-town feel
remains on Main Street, the housing boom of the 1990s has resulted in a
sprawling, culturally and ethnically diverse community. The school has
experienced the same demographic shifts. The school has become a micro-
cosm of the multicultural nature of southern Ontario. A sea of portable class-
rooms dwarfs the original building. When the school board assigned Bill
Andrews to the school in 1998, he assumed responsibility for a staff that was
largely White and middle-aged and in some ways oblivious to the changing
nature of the school. Thirty-eight percent of the staff had taught at the school
for more than 20 years, and 65% had taught at the school more than 11 years.
Six principals in our study period preceded Andrews at Stewart Heights,
Harry Swanson (1970-1979), Morris Henry (1979-1984), Glenn Jones
(1984-1989), and Fred Jackman (1989-1998). Stewart Heights during
Swanson’s 9-year tenure was worlds away from the present. Located in a
semirural town, the school’s students were described as “farm kids” and
“town kids.” During Swanson’s lengthy tenure, the school became a closely
knit, culturally tight, comfortable school for both students and teachers.
Somewhat paternalistic, Swanson was praised by a retired Stewart Heights
teacher for “trying to maintain a foot in the classroom,” which the teacher
added, “No principal can do that now. I think the principals nowadays are
more bound by contracts and rules and have less freedom to make judgments
individually about individual matters.” Glen Jones, the third principal, was
described as “an absolutely amazing man” and was known most for his abil-
ity to connect with students and his sense of humor. “He was the one who told
me to pretend that I was deaf if anyone asked me to go into administration,”
one teacher reported jokingly. His successor, Fred Jackman declared, “I
actually lived in awe of Glenn and had some fear of dropping the ball that he
had passed to me because he was very well-liked—I think loved—by the stu-
dents.” He went on to say that, on his arrival, some members of the staff told
him that “there was a need at times for more organizational strength, some
backbone in dealing with certain parents who were quite understandably
advocates for their children but perhaps at the expense of others.”
Jackman himself was described as “a delightful guy and absolutely fab-
ulous man.” In general, the teachers that knew him respected him and his
administrative team, which were often described as “very stable.” Jackman
referred to himself as a “principal-teacher” and believed that a major part of
his job was to help make it easier for teachers to do theirs. This, he believed,
was both his strength and his weakness. As he stated,
One of the difficulties I found for my personal approach to leadership was that I
didn’t have a particular direction or goal for my school. I simply wanted to fa-
cilitate the relationship between teachers and students, and I thought my job
was to take as much of the administrivia, and annoyance and pressure from out-
side sources off the teachers so that they could work effectively with kids.
After 9 years of stability and a focus on teachers’ needs and concerns, Bill
Andrews replaced the popular Jackman, who had decided to retire. Stewart
Heights was Bill Andrews’s third principalship. He had spent 5 years at Talis-
man Park and 2 years in a systemwide role in the district office. A police-
man’s son, Bill was tall, confident, and scholarly. His considerable inbound
knowledge allowed him to move confidently, quickly, and energetically, to
shake the school out of its insularity, and to redirect staff members’ efforts to-
ward the interests of students and the community. Two very capable and ex-
perienced assistant principals, one male and a visible minority and the other
female, ably supported him.
By articulating firm expectations for staff performance and students’ be-
havior and demonstrating by example that change was possible, he suc-
ceeded in moving the school to a point where it was beginning to function as a
professional learning community by the end of his 2nd year as principal.
When guidance counselors, for example, demanded help because they said
changing students’timetables was impossible, he brushed them aside and did
it himself to demonstrate that indeed it could be done within existing re-
sources. Perhaps frustrated by his inability to alter the bureaucratic nature of
Talisman Park, he aggressively addressed the dominance of the department
heads’ group and the perceived lack of influence of the assistant heads and
staff as a whole. He immediately took steps to address such building issues as
the tawdry appearance of the school, and he also initiated a process to mobi-
lize the staff behind a coherent set of school goals. To heighten staff aware-
ness, he presented the staff with survey data showing that 95% of staff was
satisfied with the school but only 35% of students and 25% of parents were
satisfied, so this created a common problem that staff had to solve together.
When confronted with this data, many staff members reacted with disbelief
and attacked the credibility of the research. Although Andrews was generally
responsive to staff opinions, there was no doubt who made the final decisions
and who was in charge. As one experienced teacher explained,
He’s brought a willingness to think about kids, to do things for kids, and to
make kids look good, as opposed to managing the status quo. And I think for a
long time, this school had a good reputation . . . and so it just went along. In the
meantime, its reputation in the community kind of went away, but nobody
within this building really realized it. I think with the principal’s arrival, he
knew the problems, and he set out to deal with them and to make changes, and I
think, you know for the most part, it’s been good.
Andrews had his critics. Interestingly, many of the critics were women, as
they were at Talisman Park. “I think he has ideas of where he wants to go and I
think he’s going to, but his overall style is almost an imposing kind of thing
that will be, ‘This is how it will be.’” “[He has been] insisting that there’s cer-
tain things he has to do because this is his mandate from the board.” “He’s
a change agent and an instigator, but it sometimes is decreed to be done.”
Andrews never tried to move from a peripheral trajectory. It was his goal to
dramatically transform the prevailing community of practice as quickly as
possible. He used instrumental strategies to achieve his goals because more
empowering strategies require time and staff receptiveness and capacity.
After only 2 years at Stewart Heights, Bill received an appointment to a
position at the district office. In addition, the school board appointed one of
his assistant principals as the principal of another school in the district and
also moved the second assistant principal to a nearby school. There was no
time to consolidate their legacy through building leadership networks and
limited opportunity to connect with the incoming leadership team. The needs
of the system clearly superseded the needs of the school.
It was into this situation that the board parachuted Jerry West, a new prin-
cipal appointee, and two newly appointed vice principals. The departure of
Andrews’s assistant principals and their replacement by inexperienced ap-
pointees exacerbated West’s feelings of being overwhelmed and isolated. As
he observed,
The previous principal had had 10 years experience. Now he was here only for
2 years. But he came in with a certain skill set having had 10 years experience. I
came in with no experience . . . so I had to develop some other skills . . . as well
as running the school.
West had held a number of leadership roles before becoming a principal, and
at the time of his appointment to Stewart Heights, West was just settling into
his second assistant principal position in a large and complex urban school.
Despite his strong work ethic and 5 years experience as an assistant princi-
pal, he found the first 18 months of his new role daunting. His inbound trajec-
tory had not prepared him for the challenge of replacing such an experienced
and high profile, indeed charismatic, leader like Andrews nor to deal with
mandated external reforms. West was the third principal appointed to Stewart
Heights in 4.5 years. This pattern compares to the period from 1970 to 1998,
when the school had four principals in 28 years. West found himself dealing
with a staff that felt that “we are not going to have a principal come in and tell
us what to do.” He observed,
The role of the principal is dramatically different than that of the assistant prin-
cipal. I’ve moved from more operational pieces as an assistant principal to the
human resources, policy, and program responsibilities of the principal. There
is a whole piece of learning about where to get information from and who to
rely on to make a prudent decision. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new teacher or a
new principal—when you walk in new, it is work, building a reputation and
building trust. After 18 months, my stomach has finally stopped churning.
Like many novice principals, West had received little formal induction to
the role or to his new school. Historically, the school board had provided
strong staff development opportunities for prospective and existing princi-
pals in his system; however, funding cutbacks meant that there were no pro-
grams available for new principals like Jerry West.
West felt frustrated by the circumstances of his appointment. Only a few
years before, West would have been able to count on his area superintendent
or an experienced colleague to orient and mentor him. By the time he arrived
at Stewart Heights, the board had cut the number of superintendents to reduce
the district’s budget, so that two superintendents served 26 secondary schools
compared to six only 2 years before. In addition, the few senior colleagues
who had not taken advantage of early retirement were themselves on over-
load. Although he knew that it was important for Stewart Heights to keep pro-
gressing and he had demonstrated in his past schools that he was an enthusi-
astic change agent, West felt that he needed a year “just getting to understand
the school.” Because the school had had such a rapid turnover of principals,
West also sensed that some of the staff was ready to “outwait” him and so
block or ignore any changes that he proposed. As he explained, “It’s only
been 1-plus years, but teachers are coming to me already, and asking how
long am I going to be here?”
Unfortunately, the pressure of events denied West the opportunity to ne-

gotiate an entry process that would enable him to build meaningful relation-
ships with staff members. His promotion had occurred at the same time as the
pressure to implement the standards agenda of the provincial government
was at its peak. Unlike Andrews, West had limited opportunity to develop a
sense of directionality with his staff—his efforts were superseded by pre-
packaged mandates from outside the school and its community. As he stated,
“Sometimes the rules change day by day by day in terms of what we can and
can’t do.” He added,
As we were making our own changes, moving forward in the direction that we
believed we need to go, other changes and outside pressures have been im-
posed on us as well. So things that you want to do have to take a back seat some-
times and that can be quite frustrating.
Observations at the school climate meetings chaired by West indicated

that with the previous principal’s departure, student-centered policies now
gave way to more conventional behavior code initiatives. Rules replaced
common sense, punishment replaced encouragement, and negativity re-
placed affirmations. Teachers’ issues had replaced students’ issues, and in
this regard, the school had reverted to the culture as it had existed in the days
of Fred Jackman.
The early achievements of school improvement at Stewart Heights under
Andrews faded quickly. Hierarchical structures such as the department
heads’ group that had dominated before Andrews’s arrival reasserted its
authority, and West went along because he needed its support to ensure com-
pliance with Ministry curriculum and assessment requirements. In effect, the
schoolwide learning community that Andrews had initiated now fragmented
into a number of micro-political units. Certainly the clumsiness of the
board’s approach to replacing Andrews and his assistants contributed to
West’s difficulties, but the complexity of government reforms and West’s
own lack of preparation set him up for failure.
Although very different in many ways, Andrews and West both remained
on a peripheral trajectory. Often charismatic leaders like Andrews remain
peripheral to their new school community, achieve considerable short-term
change in an organization, and then move on. Although such leaders may add
to their personal reputations as “movers and shakers,” their legacies, like
Andrews’s, are usually short-lived and their real legacies are often the disap-
pointment and cynicism of those staff members who worked with the leader
to effect change and now feel abandoned and used. As a result of the circum-
stances of his succession, Jerry West remains peripheral to the school’s
existing community of practice and may never become an insider. If West

continues to operate on the periphery, he may find himself, in time, perma-
nently marginalized by the staff and ineffectual as a leader. Interestingly,
Andrews, the “transformational leader,” and the beleaguered West both
employed “instrumental” strategies to achieve their purposes—Andrews by
choice and West by circumstance. West, who by nature and belief favored
more empowering strategies, had to deal with teachers who, like those at Tal-
isman Park, were withdrawing their discretionary commitments. He had to
revert to traditional bureaucratic structures and instrumental strategies to
ensure compliance with district and Ministry fiats.
Blue Mountain High School

By way of contrast to both Talisman Park and Stewart Heights, Blue
Mountain High School provides an example of carefully planned principals’
succession, in which attention to the sustainability of a school’s purposes,
culture, and structures were built into its very design. In 1994, the South
Board of Education opened Blue Mountain High School as a “lighthouse”
school to challenge the grammar of secondary schooling in Ontario. Situated
in a middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhood, the school began with 600
students and now has a student population of more than 1,000 students.
Established with an experienced and imaginative principal, Ben McMaster,
a carefully selected staff, many of whom had former connections with
McMaster and with the advantage of a full year’s advanced planning, the
school in its first 5 years established great technological, structural, and
curriculum innovations.
Structurally, the school had no subject-defined departments, its staff
workrooms were mixed, and school documentation declares that “no subject
or extracurricular area dominates another with respect to importance.” The
initial leadership team was comprised of eight “process leaders” in areas like
technology or assessment and evaluation, rather than the customary group of
subject department heads. In addition to their own subject area, all teachers
belonged to at least one process team that met regularly. Leadership in the
school involved all teachers either formally or informally—indeed, assum-
ing leadership was a shared expectation.
Architecturally, the school has a relaxed meeting space in the entrance
area, its main hallway resembles a shopping mall, and the gymnasium and fit-
ness center are widely used by staff and community as well as students. Blue
Mountain is fully integrated for technology, with every student having access
to the Internet and all staff members having laptop computers and being
expected to model the use of technology to students. The assessment and
reporting system is computerized, and achievement data are regularly col-

lated, analyzed, and shared with parents.
The school was self-consciously a learning organization; for example,
leaders modeled “systems thinking” in staff meetings (all announcements are
distributed electronically to make space for this), and teachers model such
thinking in classrooms when school issues are discussed. Many of the highly
dedicated and enthusiastic staff were omnivores of personal and professional
learning outside school as well as within it.
Ben McMaster planned for his own successor from the outset. McMaster,
a former professional athlete and special education teacher, anticipated his
own departure by working hard to create a school structure that would perpet-
uate his devotion to the idea of a learning community when he eventually left
the school. McMaster’s influence was pervasive at Blue Mountain—his
imprint was everywhere—in the school’s philosophy, organization, design,
and culture. He was especially alert to the threats to his work posed by the
possibility of an ensuing principal importing a significantly different philos-
ophy. He explained that “I negotiated very strongly [with the district] to have
my assistant principal appointed principal.” After 4 years, the system did in
fact move him to a larger, “high-profile” school in the system and promoted
his assistant principal Linda White to principal.
Blue Mountain’s second principal had impeccable insiders credentials as
its founding assistant principal. She continued to stress the relationships
theme. In her 1st year, as she worked to renegotiate her relationships with
staff as the principal, she and her leadership team were described by many of
the staff as “wonderful,” “supportive,” “spectacular,” and “amazing,” people
who were “still teachers at heart.” She was highly valued as being “very
caring” and as someone who recognized that “family comes first.” White
worked hard to be open and accessible. She dedicated herself to maintaining
the originating philosophy of the school. As she explained,
Before [McMaster] was moved to another school and we talked—we talked

about how we could preserve the direction that this school was moving in. We
were afraid that if a new administrator came in as a principal, that if he or she
had a different philosophy, a different set of beliefs, then it would be quite easy
to simply move things in that particular direction, and we didn’t want that to
happen.
As principal, she stated that “I’m on the same road, and any detours I take
will only be for a few moments in the overall scheme of things before I come
back onto the main road again.”
Events appear to have supplanted her intentions. The full impact of the
government’s massive reform agenda descended on the school at the same
time as she became the school’s principal. As time went by, the staff began to
notice that the twin pressures of time and complexity created a perceptible
change in her leadership style. As one staff member explained,
It’s because so much has to be done in so little time. We [used to] meet to decide
as a group how best to go about a process. Well, there’s been no meeting. We’ve
just been told these classes are closed. . . . And never in my whole career has
that ever happened. . . . There isn’t that opportunity to share information. . . .
And now it’s just sort of “top down” because there’s only time for top down.
She had become more of a manager of the external agenda than a leader of
the school’s values and ideas. Some staff members perceived the way White
tried to “talk up” change as being somewhat forced and not fully sincere—the
effect of having to manufacture optimism in a policy environment that re-
peatedly seemed to defeat it. They recognized her dilemma but also saw its
effects.
I think we’ve gone from an organization that was kind of a shared responsi-
bility, at least in appearance, to a very linear one now because of time. And
[Linda] is fairly directive, and likes to be in control of lots of things, but she’s
also a humanist with you on that. But I think we’ve lost some of that shared re-
sponsibility because of outside direction.
Like Megson and West in our other two cases, the overwhelming pressure
from external forces have gradually forced her, perhaps unwittingly, to aban-
don the empowering leadership strategies of the learning community and to
adopt more instrumental approaches. Budget cuts initiated by the school dis-
trict undermined Blue Mountain’s midlevel leadership structure by reducing
the number of members of the school’s leadership team and increased teach-
ers’ teaching loads, which in turn interfered with disciplinary and cross-
disciplinary activities. A number of the original team leaders subsequently
retired and were not replaced.
In many ways, Blue Mountain had been a model of distributed leadership
(Spillane, Halverson, & Drummond, 2001), but Secondary School Reform in
Ontario and the accompanying budget decisions have forced the new princi-
pal of Blue Mountain to adopt more hierarchical decision-making structures
and to employ more instrumental strategies to ensure compliance with gov-
ernment requirements. There is mounting evidence at Blue Mountain that
these changes, precipitated by the external reform agenda, threaten to under-
mine White’s ability to lead in ways that are consistent with her intentions
and values and with the founding philosophy of the school. More significant,
they threaten her credibility with a staff that clings to the idea of Blue Moun-
tain as a learning community.
Ben McMaster in his 5 years at Blue Mountain, enjoyed a unique opportu-

nity to empower people. As the principal of a new school, he hired his staff
with his vision of a learning community in mind, and he encouraged his col-
leagues to take personal ownership of the directions of the school. To this
end, he provided the time and the spaces, as well as organizational structures
such as process teams, to encourage a culture of collaboration and distributed
leadership. During his tenure, he had sufficient time and autonomy to inspire
his colleagues to develop a genuine learning community. He carefully
attended to his outbound trajectory by ensuring an appropriate successor, and
perhaps equally important, ensuring that leadership was widely distributed in
the school
His successor, Linda White, however, also tried to use inclusive and
empowering strategies but, in the name of predetermined organizational
changes and in the process, appeared to some staff members to be inauthentic
and to others as Machiavellian. Her inexperience as a principal, as we have
seen in the cases of Megson and West, made her particularly vulnerable and
unable to resist the external forces. Inexperienced principals appear to com-
ply more readily with external mandates and revert to managerialism out of
their own insecurity and their inability to negotiate or renegotiate an identity
with their schools’ community of practice.
Although both Talisman Park and Stewart Heights had immature learning
communities and long histories of bureaucratic leadership, they might well
be expected to revert under pressure to traditional structures and cultures, but
Blue Mountain provides a cautionary example of the vulnerability of a well-
developed learning community and the fragility of empowering leadership
strategies in a climate of planned chaos.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The Change Over Time? study has provided a unique opportunity to

explore changes in leadership in general, and principals’succession in partic-
ular, during a 30-year period. Principals’ transitions have often given rise to
problems, challenges, and upset for teachers and principals alike. However,
our study indicates that accelerating turnover of principals, resulting from the
aging of the baby boom generation, principals’ mobility, and the pressures of
the standardization agenda have created additional difficulties that threaten
the sustainability of school improvement efforts and undermine the capacity
of incoming and outgoing principals to lead their schools. On the basis of our
cases, four major factors have made principal succession increasingly
problematic.
First, in recent years, the turnover of principals has accelerated at an ever-

increasing rate. Although Talisman Park had six principals in its first 68
years, it had two thirds as many (four) in scarcely a sixth of the time (12
years). From 1970, Stewart Heights had just four principals in 28 years, then
three in quick succession in the next 5 years. Outside the three cases of this
article, Lord Byron High School described in the accompanying article by
Giles and Hargreaves had four principals in its first 14 years after opening in
1970, then just as many in the past 5. These and other cases support the view
that to bring about sustainable improvement, principals need sufficient time
to negotiate or renegotiate an identity and acceptance within their school’s
community of practice. Yet in almost all cases, rapid leadership transitions
limited leaders’ abilities to create and leave a lasting legacy. Our data seri-
ously questions the effectiveness of regular, rapid, and bureaucratically pre-
dictable principal rotation, especially in turbulent times. This “revolving
door” principalship only breeds staff cynicism, which subverts long-term,
sustainable improvement.
Whether it is because of administrative rotation, mobility, premature
retirements, the growing unpopularity of the principalship, or the difficulty
of retaining leaders in urban schools, the practice of predictably frequent
principal succession must be brought into serious question. In particular, the
possibility should be explored of assigning the longest principal tenures
(beyond the customary 5 years) to those schools that have just begun to
achieve significant schoolwide success to ensure that improvement efforts
endure. Otherwise, schools become like early flying machines—repeatedly
crashing just after takeoff.
Second, leaders like Watson, Andrews, and McMaster, who made strides
in influencing their schools, were able to access or develop the inbound
knowledge that prepared them for their jobs. However, as more and more
leaders like Watson take early retirement and others, like Andrews and
McMaster, are siphoned up into higher levels of the system, their successors
are increasingly left behind to manage the encroaching agendas of standard-
ization. In an environment of runaway reform demands, these successors are
being denied the time to engage in an entry process that would help them to
engender the trust of their staffs and gain insight into the cultures and micro-
politics of their schools. Inexperienced and unprepared principals like West
and Megson are condemned to ensuring that teachers comply with outside
mandates as best as they can, rather than working with their colleagues to
achieve shared, internally developed improvement goals for their schools. In
the context of the current reform movement, these latter-day principals typi-
cally have neither the inbound knowledge and training nor the confidence
that comes with experience to colonize external mandates for their internal
improvement purposes (Goodson, 2003; Stoll & Myers, 1998; Woods,

Jeffrey, Troman, & Boyle, 1997). Moreover, the budget cuts that have accom-
panied the market fundamentalist version of standardization—doing more
for less—have eliminated from the system large numbers of leaders who had
once provided substantial mentoring for new principals. New principals are
increasingly left to fend for themselves without the time or the conditions to
move from a peripheral trajectory to an insider’s one. Instead of leading from
the center, they are left to manage from the edge. Creating and protecting sub-
stantial support systems for new principals that can pass on, share, and
develop the essential inbound knowledge of incoming leadership seems to us
to be a second paramount priority of educational leadership reform.
Third, the transition from McMaster to White at Blue Mountain provides
evidence that thoughtful succession plans can really help to sustain school
improvement. They provide considerable lead time, they develop shared
understanding and commitment among faculty through meaningful commu-
nication, and they harmonize the new principal’s inbound knowledge with
the outbound knowledge of the departing principal and his or her concern
to maintain and build on what has already been achieved in the school. Yet
the vast majority of our data in the three cases reported in this article, and the
others in the project as a whole, point to most succession events being ones
that are unplanned, arbitrary, and ethically questionable. In the main, un-
planned or hastily arranged successions seem to serve only as an enemy of
improvement.
Our third recommendation, therefore, is that all schools should have a
leadership succession plan that should be an integral and mandatory part of
its school improvement plan. More is at stake here than grooming individual
successors, than identifying the next particular leader. The chances of suc-
cessful succession are most enhanced when they do not rest on the shoulders
of one or two individuals but are invested in the hearts and minds of everyone.
Succession plans should attend to the composition and development of the
entire leadership team in a school to ensure that successful succession will be
a shared, distributed responsibility (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003). This also
means that although systems should insist on school succession plans and
should monitor their effectiveness, schools themselves will need to assume
increasing influence over and have a greater voice prior to and during any
succession event. Perhaps the days should be numbered when districts play
chess with their schools and move their principals around like pawns to main-
tain the illusion of improvement.
Finally, our analysis of change in leadership over time has not only
revealed a lot about leadership succession but also highlighted changes in
leaders themselves. In almost all our schools, not just the three cases
investigated here, teachers have reported great changes in leaders and leader-
ship between the period ending in the mid- to late 1970s and that commenc-
ing in the mid-1990s. In this characterization of leadership now and then,
leaders in the 1960s and 1970s were remembered as larger-than-life charac-
ters that were attached to their schools, knew most people within them, and
stayed around long enough to make a lasting impression. By comparison,
leaders during the past 7 or 8 years are typically perceived as being more like
anonymous managers than distinctive leaders. They are less visible around
the school, seem more attentive to the system’s agenda and their own careers
rather than the needs of the students and teachers, and are more of a passing
presence in the school than a lasting influence on its development.
The changing nature of leadership cannot be separated from the rotational
changes among leaders themselves. Principals like Ben McMaster of Blue
Mountain build powerful learning communities that sustain change over time
by employing “empowering” strategies that engage teachers in working
together to achieve meaningful goals for students’learning. In our data, these
leaders are a rarity in the years spanning the turn of this century. Instead,
increasing erosion of leaders’ and teachers’ autonomy has forced more and
more principals to use “instrumental” and managerial tactics to achieve the
short-term shifts that comply with standardized reform. As our data suggest,
leaders who empower others need considerable autonomy and time to work
with their school communities to establish and achieve meaningful school
improvement goals. When governments mandate standardized and micro-
managed reforms that preempt most school-based direction setting, they
reduce school leaders like Jerry West to mere functionaries. Under these cir-
cumstances, although standardized reforms often create short-term move-
ment, they fail to produce sustainable improvement.
Our study has indicated that the rapid turnover of school leaders and prin-
cipals especially creates significant barriers to educational change. If princi-
pals are viewed by teachers, parents, and students as merely interchangeable
messengers of agents external to the school, then the kind of leadership
required for long-term, sustained enhancement of learning for all students
will remain cruelly elusive.
Incorporating succession plans and processes into all school improve-
ment plans and processes will push all administrators and those around them
to take the long-term challenges of succession and sustainability more seri-
ously. Allowing and encouraging leaders who are achieving success with
improvement to stay longer in their schools so that the improvements become
strongly embedded in the hearts and minds of the teachers and their cultures
also seems an important way forward—as does committing to a process of
grooming inside leadership successors in schools that have been performing
strongly for some time. But alongside all these measures, it is equally impor-
tant to redesign the reform framework so that leaders can lead well, lead with
others, and make that leadership last, rather than reacting frantically and
compliantly to the repetitive change syndrome (Abrahamson, 2004) of man-
dated and micromanaged reform.
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pals’ personal and professional lives and on its impact on school success in times of change.

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Educational Administration Quarterly

Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2006) 62-89

School Leadership Succession and

Keywords: succession; principal mobility; trajectories; learning organization; stan-

T here is increasing evidence of a potential leadership crisis in many West-

replacements (Brooking, Collins, Court, & O’Neill, 2003; Earley, Evans,

increased job stress, inadequate school funding, balancing school manage-

A similar pattern exists in Canada and particularly in Ontario. A study by

are comparable on a percentage basis to the attrition rates of school adminis-

The process of principal succession has a diverse but somewhat discon-

administrators (Leithwood, Steinbach, & Begley, 1992; Pounder & Young,

by means of socialization tactics, stages, contexts, and outcomes. Based on

Developing a practice requires the formation of a community whose members

Four of Wenger’s (1998) trajectories are particularly appropriate for this

emphasize the need to connect goal setting, recruitment, development,

Leadership was one of six areas of analysis around which researchers

Rowan (1966-1974) and Arness (1974-1983) were totally committed to the

Issues unrelated to his school leadership resulted in the district’s moving

forts. Most, it would appear, have remained on a peripheral trajectory, and as

This staff group, and the other micro-politically powerful department

She democratized the school’s decision making by taking major decisions to

Unfortunately, the pressure of events denied West the opportunity to ne-

Observations at the school climate meetings chaired by West indicated

existing community of practice and may never become an insider. If West

Blue Mountain High School

reporting system is computerized, and achievement data are regularly col-

Before [McMaster] was moved to another school and we talked—we talked

Ben McMaster in his 5 years at Blue Mountain, enjoyed a unique opportu-

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The Change Over Time? study has provided a unique opportunity to

First, in recent years, the turnover of principals has accelerated at an ever-

improvement purposes (Goodson, 2003; Stoll & Myers, 1998; Woods,

Stine, D. E. (1998, April). A change of administration: A significant organizational life event.

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