What a school principal really does
You run a school through other people: coaching teachers, deciding hard discipline cases, and answering to parents every single day.
FieldEducation
Preparation (O*NET Job Zone)Extensive preparation needed
What the work involves
What fills a typical week for school principals, built from O*NET occupation data.
- Meeting with students about behavior, grades, and personal problems, often with no warning
- Talking with parents and staff about student problems, in person, by phone, and by email
- Walking into classrooms to observe teaching and writing feedback for teachers
- Handling discipline referrals and attendance problems and deciding consequences
- Reviewing test and benchmark data to update the school improvement plan
- Deciding how to spend limited funds and signing off on purchases
- Hiring, training, and evaluating staff, and leading professional development sessions
What the days are like
What people in the job know
- Conflict is part of an ordinary week, not a rare event. Most principals deal with some kind of dispute at least weekly. Conflict situations: 35% every day, 32% once a week or more but not every day (O*NET Work Context)
- The job runs well past the school day. Evening events, board meetings, and paperwork stretch the week. Duration of typical work week: 80% more than 40 hours (O*NET Work Context)
- You are judged on results other people produce. Your teachers' outcomes count as your outcomes. Responsible for others' work outcomes: 75% very high responsibility (O*NET Work Context)
- You make decisions that affect people almost every day, often before you have every fact. Frequency of decision making: 55% every day (O*NET Work Context)
- Some of the conflict is physical. Half of principals face physically aggressive people at least yearly. Deal with physically aggressive people: 13% once a week or more, 20% once a month or more, 50% never (O*NET Work Context)
How people get into it
Most principals start as classroom teachers, then earn a master's degree in educational leadership and a state administrator certification. O*NET reports 62% of respondents say a master's degree is required and Job Zone 5 notes many of these roles need more than five years of related experience. A common step is assistant principal or administrative intern before leading a school.
The Firstday trial, easy to hard
Three simulated tasks with AI coworkers who message you, react to your work and coach with questions. Nobody scores you.
What the trial can't show: This trial cannot show the physical pace of the job: standing and walking the halls most of the day, breaking up a fight, supervising buses and lunch, or the feel of a building with 700 students in it. It also cannot show the slow, year long work of building trust with a staff, and it compresses decisions that would really involve district staff, counselors, and special education teams over several days. You act as an administrative intern because real discipline and personnel decisions require a licensed administrator. Discipline and special education steps follow federal IDEA and FERPA rules only; real states and districts add their own rules, and the prices and union contract are fictional.
Reading about it is one thing.
Find out how the work feels to you before you spend on a degree, course or job change. Your first trial is free.
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Job details on this page are built from O*NET OnLine, 11-9032.00. This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.