High School Principals’ Leadership Roles and Use of Time

Time is the most valuable currency in schools. This study describes how successful high school principals reported spending and allocating their time to various leadership tasks using selected items from a study of principal-time use and school effectiveness in Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida US. Public high school principals were selected based on their 2019 Missouri School Improvement Program performance indicators and asked to complete either a paper or online survey. Findings show that principals spend more time on management-related activities than curriculum and instruction-related activities. There is a strong association between time-use on curriculum and instruction with both gender and school size. The more leadership experience a principal has, the less time they are likely to spend on school management activities. Time-use on organization management is strongly associated with school size. If instructional leadership is a fundamental priority for principals, then development and support of successful principalship will require a redesign of their roles to free time for instructional leadership. School districts that hire principals from a pool of assistant principals (AP) or invest in principal pipelines, need to develop a strategy to build APs’ instructional and leadership skills.