Principals...Worth the Money?

I am about to enter a new frontier in the field of education: Becoming a principal.  As I make this leap from teacher to administrator, I have some reservations.  To start, I wonder if the position demands the salary.  According to Salary.com, a principal's salary starts around $72,500 and goes all the way up to $115,000.  In other words, a starting principal's salary is double my starting salary as a teacher. 

Years ago read Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire by the nationally award winning teacher Rafe Esquith, and I chuckled when I read his opinion about administrators, saying they are dispensable like cheap furniture.  Although good for a laugh, Rafe's exhortations about principals don't hold up against many research findings.  In fact, according to the Consortium on Chicago Public Schools research in the book Organizing Schools for Improvement, the single greatest indicator of a successful school is the quality of leadership.  A high caliber principal can - with the right staff and community - turn around a failing school.  Similarly, a lackluster administrator can sink a high achieving school. 

As it turns out, Esquith missed the mark.  Administrators are key ingredients for a schools success.  Irreplaceable, if you have a good one. 

Hence, transitioning from teacher to principal requires a new kind of fortitude, a new level of responsibility.  Whether or not those responsibilities command a six figure salary is debatable, but whether or not those responsibilities directly and resolutely determine a schools success, well...that seems to have already been determined.