An examination of the perceived resources and demands of North Carolina elementary school principals

School administrators are faced with an increased number of responsibilities and challenges. In order to effectively create and maintain effective schools, educational leaders must provide principals with the proper tools. The purpose of this study was to administer the Comparative Appraisal of perceived Resources and Demands for Principals (CARD-P) to North Carolina elementary school principals. Adapted from the CARD (Lambert et al., 2001) which was developed to assess the unique demands and resources experienced by teachers, the CARD-P (Maerz, 2011) was designed to measure perceived stress in the elementary school principalship. All public elementary school principals in the state of North Carolina (N=1,105) were invited to participate. A total of 303 (27.4%) elementary principals responded. In this study, public elementary school principals were defined as principals who lead in any prekindergarten through sixth grade school or any combination between prekindergarten and sixth grade. Overall, a majority of the respondents found their role as principal to be very or extremely demanding. Administrative responsibilities that were identified as being most demanding included teacher evaluation, curriculum/instructional initiatives, federal legislation, testing, and changes in policy and procedures. Implications and directions for future research are discussed