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It seems that you are putting a lot of the blame for poor school performance on the shoulders of the principal. It has been my experience that poor performance in school can be traced to any one of a number of factors, the least of which would be the school principal. I work in schools and here's what I see:

1. Children come to school having been abused at home, and it is the school's job to detect this, deal with it, and if it's bad enough, report it to the authorities.

2. Children come to school hungry. It is the school's job to feed them, even if they can't pay.

3. Children come to school with racist attitudes, mysoginist attitudes, and many other deficiencies that they learn from their parents. It becomes the school's job to try to teach them right from wrong because no one else will.

4. Children come to school convinced that they can do no wrong. When they are caught breaking the rules, the most common answer we hear from them is, "I'll call my mother and SHE will tell you off." And, unfortunately, that's usually exactly what happens.

5. Children come to school from homes that put no value on education. It is very hard to give someone something that they not only don't want, but will fight against.

6. Any move that a principal (or a superintendent, or a school board) makes to improve the educational climate of the school is met with resistance from a public who worries more about their children's self-esteem than whether or not they are actually learning anything in school.

7. Children come from homes where they are taught that they will never be held accountable for anything. When schools hold students accountable for their own work and their own behavior, the schools (and, by extension, the principals) become the bad guys.

8. Our government, rather than deal with the problems where they really lie, i.e. in the home, dumps more and more accountability onto the schools, trying to make them the magic cure for all of society's ills.

9. People in a community want all the services that a school district can possibly offer, but they don't want to pay for them. Watch how people will come out in equal numbers to protest either a tax increase or a proposal to cut a program. If you want the programs, you have to pay for them.

Finally, I see in your question that you say "students are performing low on tests and are constantly cutting extracurricular activities" Do you mean that students are not showing up for ("cutting") extracurricular activities, or that the principals are cutting ("removing") extracurricular activities?

If you mean the students don't show up for them, there isn't much a principal can do about that. Extracurricular activities are voluntary.

If you mean that the principal removes them to save money, then you are blaming the wrong person. In our public school systems, the principal does not have the final say over such things. All final decisions of this type are made by a school board.

Even if your principal has some influence over this type of decision, I'm sure that he/she is not cutting activities just to see if he/she can tick people off. There is usually some financial reason. See number 9 above...

And speaking of money, you say that you pay school principals a lot of money. I think, though, if you broke their salary down on an hourly basis, taking into account evening meetings, sporting events that they have to attend, work that they take home with them, and so on, you would find that they probably make less than minimum wage.

Finally, lest you think that I'm saying that principals can do no wrong, I will concede that there are bad ones out there. To rephrase your question and ask why are SOME school principals deficient, I would answer that, given all of the information above, why would anyone want these jobs? It sometimes happens that the best and the brightest stay in the classroom where they don't have to deal with the public as much and they still get summers off.

Most principals who saw your question would answer it with another question: "Why are parents deficient? Seriously, individual taxpayers generally contribute very little to the maintenance of their school district, but they don't want their children to have to work for what they get, and they don't want to have to pay the price for all of the services that they want."

It might be that the school principles are mismanaging the school. Our school's students all knew that we "had no money", but when I checked online, we had almost the same amount as the top high school in the state, give or save a few hundred dollars. Our school looks bad on the inside and out even though we should have enough money for repairs.

Unfortunately, districts are often given monies to build new schools but not enough money to maintain them.