At the Federal Relations Conference’s opening meeting, Executive Director Gail Connelly and Deputy Executive Director Mike Schooley discussed NAESP’s legislative goals for the upcoming year and summed up NAESP’s central tenet in one simple sentence: Principals need the autonomy and the authority to lead strong schools. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, “There are no good schools without good principals.” Keeping the secretary’s position in mind, NAESP believes that it is imperative to include policies in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that support rather than hinder principals’ ability to do their jobs.
NAESP is working in conjunction with other education associations to prevent policies that compromise principals’ autonomy and policies that tie principals’ and teachers’ job security solely to standardized test scores from ever becoming law. During the conference’s opening panel, representatives from the National Education Association, the American Association of School Administrators, and the International Reading Association stressed that the needs of students—and not the goals of politicians—must drive ESEA reauthorization. NAESP is fighting for the inclusion of policies that provide funding for principals’ professional development and policies that meet the needs of the whole child. 
Schooley closed the opening remarks by outlining “four M’s” that NAESP and its members will be focusing on in the upcoming months: minimizing the inclusion of bad policy in education bills, maneuvering at the state and local levels, motivating constituents to get involved, and maximizing the pressure on lawmakers to support smart education policy. Reauthorization of ESEA, a bill that affects all principals on a daily basis, is a deliberate process (the first group of panelists predicted ESEA reauthorization would not occur until 2011), but concerted efforts at the federal level can positively influence the development of this legislation.