Principals are often conflicted by the desire to ensure that every student realizes her potential and the need to keep the school safe. Many principals have misgivings about making students with major behavioral problems, who often come from dysfunctional homes with unsupportive parents, remain somewhere that promotes neither learning nor socialization. This forces principals to evaluate whether the probability of violent or disruptive behavior by a particular student offsets their qualms about confining that student to a stagnant environment.
Principals' reluctance to assign challenging students to experienced teachers may be more related to practical considerations than an endeavor to be fair. At the time of this publication, The New York Times reported that more than 1 in 4 teachers quit within their first three years. Given this alarming statistic, principals can hardly be faulted for appeasing experienced teachers with more desirable students while assigning the ones with behavioral problems to novices whose attrition may be unavoidable.
There are two philosophies regarding student treatment: one associates fairness with equality, the other advocates treatment based on differential needs. Though no principal subscribes exclusively to either philosophy, there can be a considerable disparity between the emphasis any two principals place on egalitarianism. Principals who are less concerned about instituting a system of equal treatment are sometimes criticized based on the perception that their policies are inherently unjust.
The fact that principals are often legally restricted from sharing information about one student with another student's parents complicates matters for principals who believe in need-based treatment. Fielding questions like "How come my daughter was suspended for this when her classmate wasn't?" poses difficulties when a principal is not allowed to discuss the significance of extenuating circumstances or, in many cases, even acknowledge their existence.