This report is organized around four major topics: principals' reactions to school reform and its new governance structures; principals' assessments of their teachers and efforts to improve the human resources of their schools; the restructuring activities occurring in their schools; and, finally, a section on the principals themselves - who they are, how they spend their time, the roadblocks they face, and their feelings about their job.
The 1988 Chicago School Reform Act drastically changed the work-life of Chicago's principals; principals lost job tenure and became accountable to the Local School Councils that award their four-year contracts. This 1992 survey of Chicago's principals had a response rate of 83 percent; their opinions on school reform and its new governance structure, teachers and professional development efforts, restructuring activities occurring at the school level, and the changing principalship are presented.
