The Development and Field Test of an Employment Interview System to Identify Successful School Principals

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the reliability and validity of the employment interview system for Principals (ICIS-Principal). This instrument attempts to predict the effectiveness of principal applicants as building leaders, determined through a set of employment interview questions aligned with the primary themes found within the current literature on principal effectiveness. In particular, this study asks whether a set of effective questions can be created and, when administered by a skilled interviewer; accurately predict whether a candidate will be a successful building principal as defined by ratings from the central office. Study participants were obtained from a public school district, Guilford County Schools, North Carolina. The basis for the ICIS-Principal interview system is founded on the 2008 Educational Leadership Policy Standards, the updating of the 1996 Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). Reliability was established through the use of Cronbach's Alpha to determine how well the interview questions correlated with the constructs. Pearson correlations were utilized to determine how well the total interview instrument was able to predict the rating of job performance provided by the central office. The relationship between scores on the instrument was not positively correlated with supervisor ratings. These results did not produce the findings sought by the study. Thus, this particular structured interview instrument, which was based upon best practices for principals, did not prove to be a good indicator of principal performance considered exemplary by central office personnel.