A high school assistant principal, also referred to as a vice-principal, is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day activities of a school. As the right hand of the principal, they help ensure the safety and wellbeing of the student body, as well as the school's compliance with federal and local regulations.
The duties of a high school assistant principal vary, but in general, they typically include attending PTA meetings, facilitating faculty meetings, enforcing attendance rules, hiring staff, helping teachers develop curriculums, maintaining school safety procedures, and coordinating school activities. As you would expect, this role requires constant interaction with students, teaching staff, administrators, parents, and other personnel in the school.
Like principals, assistant principals also need to have a master's degree or doctorate to qualify for the position, as this level of education is a typical requirement for a school administration license. Aside from that, schools also require assistant principals to have extensive experience in teaching, which may range from a minimum of three to five years.
High school assistant principals make an average of $101,000. Considering the number of years and amount of experience it takes to attain this position, a six-figure salary comes as no surprise.
How to Become a High School Assistant Principal
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a high school assistant principal. For example, did you know that they make an average of $53.56 an hour? That's $111,410 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 4% and produce 11,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a High School Assistant Principal Do
There are certain skills that many high school assistant principals have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, decision-making skills and leadership skills.
How To Become a High School Assistant Principal
If you're interested in becoming a high school assistant principal, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 52.0% of high school assistant principals have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 38.3% of high school assistant principals have master's degrees. Even though most high school assistant principals have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a high school assistant principal. When we researched the most common majors for a high school assistant principal, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on high school assistant principal resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a high school assistant principal. In fact, many high school assistant principal jobs require experience in a role such as teacher. Meanwhile, many high school assistant principals also have previous career experience in roles such as assistant principal or math teacher.
High School Assistant Principal Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of principal you might progress to a role such as vice president eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title executive director.
Average Salary for a High School Assistant Principal
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for High School Assistant Principals
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
5. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
6. New York University
New York, NY • Private
7. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL • Private
8. SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY • Private
9. University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA • Private
10. Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD • Private
Top Skills For a High School Assistant Principal
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 14.9% of high school assistant principals listed professional development on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and decision-making skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable High School Assistant Principal Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use High School Assistant Principal templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your High School Assistant Principal resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
High School Assistant Principal Demographics
High School Assistant Principal Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among high school assistant principals, 32.6% of them are women, while 67.4% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among high school assistant principals is White, which makes up 67.9% of all high school assistant principals.
- The most common foreign language among high school assistant principals is Spanish at 78.6%.
Online Courses For High School Assistant Principal That You May Like
Welcome to our the third course in the School Health specialization: Providing Social, Emotional, Behavioral, and Special Education Services in School. In this course, you will learn about how social-emotional skills, mental health, and learning are related. We will focus on how schools can support social-emotional learning and promote mental health for all students. We will walk through the reasons that schools should promote student mental health. Next, we'll review school wide activities to s...
Plenty of buzz exists about blended learning and its transformational potential. But what does blended learning really mean? In this course we will explore the different models of blended learning and dive into key issues that impact students, teachers, and schools. Specifically, we will look at these issues through the lens of three high-performing schools that each use a different type of blended learning. A few of the key topics will include: - The role of the student and how to support stude...
Includes videos and over 300 pages of quizzes/worksheets (answer keys provided!)...
Best States For a High School Assistant Principal
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a high school assistant principal. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. High school assistant principals make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $139,885. Whereas in Connecticut and Massachusetts, they would average $135,859 and $129,054, respectively. While high school assistant principals would only make an average of $125,629 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Connecticut
$135,859
Avg. Salary
2. Pennsylvania
$121,218
Avg. Salary
3. New York
$125,629
Avg. Salary
How Do High School Assistant Principal Rate Their Jobs?
Top High School Assistant Principal Employers
Most Common Employers For High School Assistant Principal
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kellogg Elementary | $119,333 | $57.37 | 4 |
| 2 | Rowland Unified School District | $118,677 | $57.06 | 2 |
| 3 | Bedford County Public Schools | $118,650 | $57.04 | 3 |
| 4 | State of Connecticut | $117,433 | $56.46 | 5 |
| 5 | Springfield City Library | $116,467 | $55.99 | 5 |
| 6 | Mesa Public Schools | $116,199 | $55.86 | 4 |
| 7 | Camino Nuevo Charter Academy | $115,873 | $55.71 | 4 |
| 8 | Santa Fe Public Schools | $115,522 | $55.54 | 3 |
| 9 | Torrance Unified School District | $112,579 | $54.12 | 5 |
| 10 | Maricopa Unified School District | $111,410 | $53.56 | 6 |