School Administration

We are now in the midst of the greatest period of change in school administration since its origin in American education. Through the energizing role of the Cooperative Program in Educational Administration, the whole profession has undergone the most penetrating examination and revision of practice. The underlying concepts of the functions and process of administration have also been critically examined. As a result, school administration now is quite different from what it was ten years ago. In all probability, it will be much, much different fifty years from now.

School administration has generally lacked a unifying theory around which to solidify. It has lacked a way of looking at itself. Likewise, both practitioners and students have lacked a procedure or method by which they could examine school administration. In order that we have a common frame of reference for the discussion of school administration, a concept of administration and method of examining the way in which an administrator functions will be presented. Neither of these is original with the author. The first, an emerging concept of the superintendency of education, was developed largely through the leadership of Daniel Davies, co-ordinator of the Cooperative Program in Educational Administration (CPEA) in the Middle Atlantic region, and was tested in the field under the Supervision of Ernest Weinrich, director of the Cooperative Development of Public School Administration (CDPSA) in the state of New York.

The concept of school administration, particularly of the role of the chief school administrator, advanced by Davies, deals with three components: the administrator's job, the man he is, and the social setting in which he functions. Defined very briefly, the job includes the administrator's tasks and responsibilities, which vary in importance and emphasis as time passes, and encompasses all that is relevant to the administration of today's schools. The man brings to the job certain capacities of body, mind, emotion, and spirit. He has beliefs, values, expectations, behavior patterns, energy reserves, and skills.

School administration will be considered from many points of view, from many disciplines, and from many practical considerations. School administration has long since passed the day when it could be considered as technical skill in budget making or plant maintenance. It is not merely assigning teachers to classrooms or accounting for pupils or managing the school cafeteria. Neither should it be construed in terms of maintaining records or providing supplies. Although all these are necessary attributes of a school system, they are not the sine qua non of school administration. Therefore, over and above what we have already discussed, we need a method of examining the job performance of the administrator. We turn to Katz, who has devised a three-skill approach to the consideration of administration. Some may object to the use of the term skill in discussing administration; here it will be used in its broadest and most comprehensive meaning. It does not refer to skill in the sense that a carpenter has skill in driving a nail or a plumber has skill in wiping a joint. Rather, it refers to an understanding or judgment or the reason for doing or saying or, in its broadest sense, the ability to use one's knowledge effectively.