Emerging Themes from the Perspective of Principals

This is an analytic paper based on interviews with a sample of 20 principals from Philadelphia’s 85 lowest performing schools and interviews with private managers and representatives from the School District of Philadelphia. Emerging themes from these interviews were: 1) that principals value additional materials and resources provided through new managers; 2) that principals have a range of views about the value of the programs and processes being implemented by new managers; 3) that that there are differences between the ideal and the enacted model for each model; 4) that principles describe themselves as serving two (or more) masters; and 5) that well-intentioned interventions have unintended consequences.