Preparing
School Principals:
A National Perspective on Policy
and Program
Innovations
Elizabeth
L. Hale
Hunter N.
Moorman
Institute for Educational Leadership
Washington,
D.C.
Illinois Education Research Council
Edwardsville,
Illinois
Preparing School Principals: A National Perspective
on Policy and Program Innovations
“No one can say for certain how
the schools of the new century will differ from those of the past century – but
there can be little doubt that these schools will require different forms of
leadership.”[1]
Hunter N.
Moorman
September 2003
Suggested citation
Hale,
Elizabeth L, and Hunter N. Moorman. (2003). “Preparing School Principals: A
National Perspective on Policy and Program Innovations.” Institute for
Educational Leadership, Washington, DC and Illinois Education Research Council,
Edwardsville, IL.
© 2003
by the Institute of Educational Leadership, Inc. (IEL) and the Illinois
Education Research Council (IERC), Edwardsville, IL. All rights reserved. The
material in this publication may be freely copied and distributed, in whole or
in part, providing appropriate credit/citation is given to IEL and IERC.
ISBN
0-937846-05-8
Additional
copies of “Preparing School Principals” may be downloaded from either
the IEL (www.iel.org) or the IERC (http://ierc.siue.edu) Web site.
Acknowledgement
and Authors’ Note
This report was prepared with support from the Illinois
Education Research Council. Elizabeth
Hale is President and Hunter N. Moorman is Director of the Education Policy
Fellowship Program of the Institute for Educational Leadership. They thank Michael D. Usdan, President
Emeritus and now Senior Fellow, IEL, for his advice and contribution to this
report and the many other individuals who responded to their requests for
information about innovative programs, took the time to talk with them and
commented on the draft report. The
statements made and views expressed in this document are solely the
responsibility of the authors.
Our nation is
simultaneously acknowledging the 20th anniversary of the landmark report, A Nation at Risk,[2]
and the widespread and bipartisan acceptance of the need for America’s schools
to improve. At the same time,
implementing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 is forcing us to
confront the weaknesses of contemporary school leadership and is making it
impossible to ignore the escalating need for higher quality principals — individuals who have been prepared to
provide the instructional leadership necessary to improve student
achievement.
Laser-like
attention is being focused on one of the variables critical to effective
education: leadership. Today, school
leadership — more specifically, the principalship — is a front burner issue in
every state.
The systems that
produce our nation’s principals are complex and interrelated — and governed by
the states. Each state establishes
licensing, certification and re-certification requirements for school leaders
and, in most places, approves the college and university programs that prepare
school leaders. State policy leaders
and institutional leaders, therefore, have become key players in efforts to
improve principal preparation programs and processes. Their goal: to promote lasting improvements in school
leadership development systems by identifying and then adopting change
processes that combine the required policy and program elements.
While the jobs of
school leaders — superintendents, principals, teacher leaders and school board
members — have changed dramatically, it appears that neither organized
professional development programs nor formal preparation programs based in
higher education institutions have adequately prepared those holding these jobs
to meet the priority demands of the 21st century, namely, improved student
achievement.[3] All aspects of the school leadership issue
— the art and the science of principal leadership, as well as the policy and
regulatory frameworks in support of a state’s capacity to recruit, prepare and
retain its educational leadership workforce — are on the table and are being
scrutinized.
This report focuses on two areas in which
state policies and programs can have particular influence on school
leadership: licensure, certification
and accreditation requirements; and administrator training and professional
development.[4] This document is a distillation of the
national conversation about school leadership and principal preparation
programs. It also presents promising
approaches and practices as illustrated by selected changes being made or
promoted in and/or across state systems, in local school districts, in
universities and colleges, and in new provider organizations across the
nation.
the not so new news
Recent
studies and reports have sharpened our knowledge about the state of the
principalship, but the news that the systems that prepare our educational
leaders are in trouble comes as no surprise.
Back in 1987, the education administration profession self-identified
key trouble spots in Leaders For America’s Schools, prepared by the
University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA)-sponsored blue-ribbon
panel, the National Commission on Excellence in Educational
Administration. The report identified
several problem areas, including:
u The lack of definition of good educational leadership;
u An absence of collaboration between school districts and
colleges and universities;
u The low number of minorities and females in the field;
u A lack of systematic professional development;
u The poor quality of candidates for preparation programs;
u The irrelevance of preparation programs; programs devoid of
sequence, modern content and clinical experiences;
u The need for licensure systems that promote excellence; and
u An absence of a national sense of cooperation in preparing
school leaders.
The report
offered recommendations targeted to particular policy and decision makers. Suggestions for improvement included: (1) public schools should share the
responsibility for preparing school leaders with universities, (2) universities
unable to support the report’s spirit of excellence should stop preparing
school leaders, and (3) state policymakers should base licensure procedures on
defensible claims about what equips an individual to effectively lead a
school.
The Commission’s
recommendations were both ahead of the times and beyond the capacity of the
field to implement. To be successful,
efforts to prepare school leaders in new ways require advocates who understand
that school leadership is a multi-faceted issue that includes political and
managerial as well as instructional and educational components. Acting alone, professional educators have
neither the leverage nor the political capacity to conceptualize or implement
the changes needed, to build the necessary broad-based coalitions or to attract
the substantial human and financial resources required.
While the
Commission’s sweeping recommendations failed to prompt action that might have
changed the profession, the report spawned a number of smaller steps that have
helped point the way to improvement.
One such step was the development by the Council of Chief State School
Officers (CCSSO) in 1996 of a set of standards for school leaders by the Interstate
School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), a representative body of most of
the major stakeholders in educational leadership including national
associations, states and colleges and universities.
At least 35
states have adopted the ISLLC standards and use them to guide policy and practice
related to principal preparation. But,
the ISLLC standards have drawn criticism.
Some suggest that the standards are not anchored in a rigorous research
or knowledge base, that they unduly reinforce the status quo, and that they
lack sufficient specificity or operational guidance to help school leaders
figure out what to do.[5]
Despite the criticisms, the ISLLC
standards are an important development in the
field of educational leadership. They were never intended to be all-inclusive. Rather, they were intended as indicators of
knowledge, dispositions and performances important to effective school
leadership. They established a new
vision for thinking in terms of standards-based policy and practice and made a
new dimension of accountability possible.
The standards confirmed the centrality of the principal’s role in
ensuring student achievement through an unwavering emphasis on “leadership for
student learning.”
To date, the ISLLC standards have served in many states and
institutions as the framework for revising principal preparation programs and
in-service professional development activities. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), in collaboration with
ISLLC, recently created The School Leadership Series, a set of
performance-based assessments based on the ISLLC standards and used for the
licensure and professional development of school superintendents, principals
and other school leaders. These
assessments translate the ISLLC standards into performance measures on which
candidates can demonstrate their qualifications, reflect on their
professional responsibility and actions, and identify information and
strategies that will enable them to continue growing in knowledge and skills. Currently, 13 states use this ETS assessment
system to gauge candidates’ proficiency levels.
In 2002, the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) aligned its
accreditation standards for educational leadership training programs with the
ISLLC standards. This merger provides a
unified set of standards, the Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC)
standards, for the review and accreditation of administrator preparation
programs.
Toward More Coherent Educational Leadership
Development Systems — The Challenges
The intense
pressure for principals to be instructional leaders who can more effectively
implement standards-based reform has given unprecedented prominence and
political visibility to the problems of preparing school principals. Few disagree about what is wrong with how
our nation recruits and prepares school principals; the flaws are strikingly
similar to the ones identified in 1987.
The disagreements arise when policy and institutional leaders try to
address those flaws and create more coherent systems for developing and
supporting educational leaders.
The challenges of
trying to create more coherent statewide systems for developing and supporting
school leaders are framed through the lens of four core questions: How do state policies shape the talent
pool? What is the current condition of
leadership preparation? Why is change
needed? What are the options for
action? Asking these questions should
be the starting point for policy and institutional leaders who are trying to
improve a state’s capacity to develop and support educational leadership.
Question 1: How Do State Policies Shape the Talent Pool?
for leadership and one that excludes many who may be well
suited to serve.” [6]
States have
established policies on certification, licensure and program accreditation as
well as standard processes to validate and accredit administrator preparation
programs. Through these official tools
and strategies, states control entry into the field of educational
administration.
The fact that all
states except Michigan and South Dakota currently require school administrators
to be licensed illustrates how state policy constrains the administrator
candidate pool. Generally speaking,
becoming a licensed principal requires the successful completion of a fixed
number of credit hours in an approved principal preparation program
(historically in a college or university, but “the times they are a ‘changin”
as the final section of this document reports), certification as a teacher and
classroom experience. These policies
limit both the size and the overall quality of the administrator candidate pool
and are the subject of much criticism and controversy.
A recent RAND
report noted that, “formal barriers such as certification requirements and
informal barriers such as district hiring practices all but exclude those
without teaching experience from consideration for administrative positions.”[7] The Broad Foundation and The Thomas B.
Fordham Institute’s report, Better Leaders for America’s School: A Manifesto, reached a similar
conclusion: state licensure systems and
processes contribute to and exacerbate the problem.
The Manifesto
emphasized the impact of current policies on the quality of the
candidate pool. “Our
conventional procedures for training and certifying public school administrators
. . . are simply failing to produce a sufficiency of leaders whose vision,
energy and skill can successfully raise the educational standard for all
children.”[8] The report suggested minimizing regulations
(i.e., requirement for previous teaching experience) that choke off the
pipeline and make it impossible for interested applicants trained in other
fields and disciplines to enter the profession. As a matter of record and formal policy in 48 states, able non-teachers
interested in careers as school administrators are automatically barred from
consideration.
The Southern
Regional Education Board (SREB), in an earlier report, also echoed the need for
states to address certification issues in order to expand their pool of skilled
leaders. Simply put, SREB suggested
that what states needed to do was to create more flexible certification
processes to enable individuals with proven skills to enter the principalship before
they completed a university program.[9]
Data from the
National Center for Education Information (NCEI) confirm that the states are
not hotbeds of activity focused on bringing non-traditional professionals into
school leadership positions. Data from
NCEI also confirm that only eleven states report alternate certification routes for principals and
superintendents and that a whopping 99.3% of all principals have teaching
experience.[10]
Since
state licensure policies have such a direct impact on the ultimate quality of
the talent pool, it is important to review accredited principal preparation
programs. The goal: to look for indicators of quality, as well
as for alternatives to consider in their place.
Question 2: What Is the Current Condition of Leadership Preparation?
“Those who seek
entrance to leadership programs gravitate toward programs
based on convenience and ease of completion; quality of
program is hardly a leading criterion.” [11]
Nearly
20 years of efforts to reform administrator preparation programs have produced
little progress. The reforms prompted by such well-known national initiatives
as the U.S. Department of Education’s Leadership in Educational Administration
Development (LEAD) Program (1987–1993) and the Danforth Foundation’s Principals
Preparation Program achieved rather limited success. Ample research on school leadership preparation programs makes it
clear that many existing programs are in dire need of improvement.
Principals
across the nation agree that administrator training programs deserve an
“F.” In a survey of educational leaders
conducted by Public Agenda, 69% of the principals responding indicated that
traditional leadership preparation programs were “out of touch with the
realities of what it takes to run today’s schools.”[12]
Other
major voices in education who have reached the same conclusion include Joseph
Murphy, co-author of the ISLLC standards, who characterizes the programs as
“bankrupt,”[13] and
Michelle Young, Executive Director of the University Council for Educational
Administration (UCEA), who concedes that university programs have been slow to
change and that faculties are not connected to the field and often have a laissez-faire
attitude about the need to adopt standards.[14]
So
broad is the consensus for change that scores of individuals and organizations
representing K-12 and higher education established the National Commission for
the Advancement of Educational Leadership Preparation (NCAELP) in 2001. Comprised of 40 individuals, including major
scholars and leaders in the field of educational leadership and of national
organizations, NCAELP’s charge is to examine and improve the quality of
educational leadership in the United States. Six papers and two commentaries
solicited by the Commission to guide discussions are available at the NCAELP
Website, http://www.ncaelp.org/
The
general consensus in most quarters is that principal preparation programs (with
a few notable exceptions) are too theoretical and totally unrelated to the
daily demands on contemporary principals.
The course work is poorly sequenced and organized, making it impossible
to scaffold the learning. Because
clinical experiences are inadequate or non-existent, students do not have
mentored opportunities to develop practical understanding or real-world job
competence.
Admission
standards to most accredited programs are too low and few, if any, efforts are
made to identify high potential applicants, to target women and minorities for
inclusion or to identify individuals interested in working in high needs rural
or urban environments. School district
pay policies may be part of the problem, too.
Typically, a school district pay scale rewards those who accrue credits beyond
the undergraduate level. Such credits
can be easily obtained by taking courses through administrator preparation
programs. This encourages
self-selection by many applicants who may be of dubious quality and have little
or no intention of ever seeking an administrative post.[15] Since self-selection is a standard practice,
administrator programs generally end up serving clusters of individuals
operating on their own rather than serving cohorts of individuals who are
developed into a learning community — an integral feature of an effective
preparation program.
The
lack of partnerships between colleges and universities and school districts
affects the selection and admission of candidates and the design and conduct of
the preparation program. Absent
partnerships with school districts, there are no easily accessible mechanisms
for identifying the best candidates – individuals who have shown the greatest
promise of future success as a principal and who will be likely to return to
the school district and make valuable contributions. 21st
century partnerships between school districts and universities are not
“your father’s Oldsmobile.” Today’s partnerships must focus on the areas
of greatest need. Schools and universities
must work together to recruit and prepare diverse cohorts of highly qualified
candidates – men and women who can serve in urban or rural settings, lead
low-performing schools and prepare their communities to meet changing
demographic, social, economic and political change.
The lack of strong working relationships
with school districts also makes it impossible to develop learning laboratories
in which “student-principals” can make protected or mentored mistakes from
which they can learn and develop. As
Cambron-McCabe and Cunningham have observed, “ . . . the need for change in
leadership preparation is not an issue.
Rather, the possible approaches that can be taken to strengthen our
field are the subject of debate.”[16]
Question 3: Why Is Change Needed?
“. . . the ‘leadership ability’ and ‘leadership values’ of
the principal determine in large measure
what transpires in a school; what transpires in a school
either promotes,
nourishes,
or impedes and diminishes student academic success.” [17]
Our nation is now confronted
by a profound disconnect between pre- and in-service training, the current
realities and demands of the job and the capacity of school leaders to be
instructional leaders. Strong
leadership is the heart of all effective organizations, be they private, public
or non-profit. An increasing body of
evidence confirms that such leadership is also important for public schools –
but it is leadership of a very special sort.
The clarion call today is for adept instructional leaders, not mere
building managers.
There is a growing consensus that “command
and control” leadership models do not and
will
not work in today’s high accountability school systems. Good leadership for schools is shared
leadership. It has many forms and many
names: distributive leadership, change facilitation and constructivist
leadership.
The old model of leadership with its
strict separation of management and production is no longer effective. “Principals must serve as leaders for
student learning. They must know
academic content and pedagogical techniques.
They must work with teachers to strengthen skills. They must collect, analyze and use data in
ways that fuel excellence.”[18] Principals also must be able to permit and
encourage teachers to exercise leadership outside the classroom. Roland Barth, the founder of the Harvard
Principals’ Center, notes that . . .
“there are at least ten areas . . . where teacher involvement is actually
essential to the health of a school, ranging from selecting textbooks and
instructional materials to designing staff development programs to evaluating
teacher performance.”[19]
Schools of the 21st century require a new kind of principal,
one who fulfills a variety of roles:[20]
· Instructional leader — is focused on strengthening
teaching and learning, professional development, data-driven decisionmaking and
accountability.
· Community leader — is imbued with a big picture
awareness of the school’s role in society; shared leadership among educators,
community partners and residents; close relations with parents and others; and
advocacy for school capacity building and resources.
·
Visionary
Leader —
has a demonstrated commitment to the conviction that all children will learn at
high levels and is able to inspire others inside and outside the school
building with this vision.
To be sure, all
three types of leadership are important, but the priority must be instructional
leadership – leadership for learning.
Principals of today’s schools must be able to (1) lead instruction, (2)
shape an organization that demands and supports excellent instruction and dedicated
learning by students and staff and (3) connect the outside world and its
resources to the school and its work.
As a corollary proposition, preparation programs must fulfill the vision embodied in the ISLLC
standards and develop principals who have the knowledge, skills and attributes
of an instructional leader and the capacity to galvanize the internal and
external school communities in support of increased student achievement and
learning.
Traditionally,
college- and university-based educational leadership programs have emphasized
management and administrative issues rather than curricular and instructional
issues. The paramount nature of
teaching and learning — the business of schools — has never been stressed. Recent findings from the Southern
Regional Education Board (SREB) reaffirm the assertions the National Commission
on Excellence in Educational Administration made more than 15 years ago: There is a need for better systems to
support the recruitment and development of principals. SREB’s report, Good Principals Are
the Key to Successful Schools, exhorts the states to take “luck” out of the
process and to establish a leadership development system that produces
principals who:
· Understand which school and
classroom practices improve student achievement;
· Know how to work with teachers
to bring about positive change;
· Support teachers in carrying out
instructional practices that help all students succeed; and,
· Can
prepare accomplished teachers to become principals.[21]
Question 4: What Are
the Options for Action?
Changing Policy
During the early
1990s, several states mandated policies to make fundamental changes in the
structure and content of their state’s leadership preparation programs. Through targeted policy reform processes,
these states changed how and where they prepared educational leaders and began
to develop more coherent educational leadership development systems.
In North
Carolina, the reform process was initiated in the state legislature. Changes were made in licensure, stringent
criteria for the approval of principal preparation programs were adopted and a
rigorous review of all such programs was undertaken. This process ensured that some preparation programs would be
dropped and the state would be left with high-quality programs serving
appropriate geographic regions throughout the state.
In Mississippi,
the State Superintendent of Education initiated the reform process. His office controlled teacher and
administrator program approval, but the university programs were under the
general authority of another state agency, Institutions of Higher Learning, or
of the boards of trustees of private colleges and universities. The Chief created a special entity — the
Commission on Teacher and Administrator Education, Certification, Licensure and
Development — that developed rigorous, research-based criteria for the State
Board of Education.
These reform
efforts incorporated redesigns into formal state policies that reflected a
reconceptualization of the administrator role as one focused on leadership for
learning. Each state required
interested higher education institutions to apply for program approval, absent
which program accreditation and professional licensure would be denied. The linchpin of these reforms was an
objective external program review by a panel that made approval recommendations
to the state’s most influential policymakers.
Such strategies gave external credibility to the reform process and,
equally important, gave state officials a heat shield. The external panels’ findings and
recommendations led to state decisions to approve, delay or deny program
approval. The overall result was a
reduction in the number of accredited preparation programs and an improvement
in the ones that continued.
More recent
efforts to take a policy-focused
approach to changing how a state prepares its educational leaders and to create
more coherent educational leadership development systems are being promoted by
the work of the Wallace Foundation through its Leaders Count
initiative. The Foundation created the
State Action for Educational Leadership Project (SAELP), a consortium of
national organizations serving state policymakers; the Council of Chief State
School Officers manages and supports
the consortium.[22] SAELP awarded three-year grants of $250,000
to 15 states to support the analysis of existing state-level policies and
practices that enhanced or impeded the development of educational leadership.
The states are charged with implementing policies that address education and
professional learning; licensure, certification and program accreditation;
professional practice conditions; governance structures; business priorities
and practices; and diversification of the superintendent and principal
candidate pool.
In Iowa, SAELP
support is enabling the Director of the Department of Education to lead an
effort focused on reforming administrator preparation programs. As in North Carolina and Mississippi,
preparation programs in Iowa are now required to apply for re-approval. These programs, as well as new applications,
are assessed against rigorous new criteria that reflect the roles and
responsibilities of today’s administrators.
University and college faculty members in Iowa are restructuring
programs with the full knowledge that approval (and personal survival) will be
predicated on changing traditional offerings to the satisfaction of the state’s
most authoritative policymakers.
Several important
lessons emerge from such statewide reform actions:
§ State policy levers that are part of a well-conceived and
supported plan of reform can prompt change more effectively than can a reliance
on market or professional incentives.
§ The adoption of formal policy alone does not guarantee
change. Implementation must be
accompanied by complementary elements such as formal program review, technical
assistance and monitoring.
§ While
the unit of change is the individual institution, the state can play an effective
role by encouraging collaboration instead of competition among institutions.
Changing Programs
University-based
programs that get the highest marks for preparing principals who can meet the
demands of the job in the 21st century are often viewed as deviations from the
norm. Typically, such programs are
cohort-based and serve between 20 and 25 students who enter the program at the
same time and are bonded into a community of learners. Extensive clinical activities and
field-based, mentored internships integrate the practical lessons of academic
coursework and ground them in the day-to-day realities of schools. Students are given opportunities to solve
real problems in real schools.
Faculty and other
program staff work together, often with school district administrators, to
develop and integrate the program in ways that enable students to master
identified critical competencies.
“[Such programs] . . . tend to be more demanding of participants and to
have more careful selection and screening processes. . . . [They] are more coherent and focused and pay attention to
the sequencing and scheduling of courses, and have strong collaboration with
area districts.”[23]
There are some
excellent principal preparation programs in existence. They are anchored by what the research tells
us about teaching and learning and about the role of the principal as an
instructional leader. These programs
strive to prepare individuals who can meet the challenges of school leadership
in the 21st
century. Illustrative principal
preparation programs are reported here in four categories that denote the
change strategy being used: Reform
Programs in Universities – Inside Colleges of Education; Reform Programs in
Universities – Outside Colleges of Education; Partnerships between School
Districts and/or Other Organizations; and Nontraditional Providers. A fifth category, Principal Professional
Development, provides a snapshot of selected programs using similar change
strategies to improve principal professional development activities.
Reform
Programs in Universities — Inside Colleges of Education
When a diverse
group of individuals was asked to identify innovative university-based
principal preparation programs, three programs were mentioned more frequently
than were others: Delta State
University, East Tennessee State University and Wichita State
University. The Delta State
University program, inaugurated in 1998, was developed with assistance from
a panel of national experts. The focus
is on preparing future principals to lead schools in the rural regions of the
Mississippi Delta. Fifteen prospective
principals are selected to participate each year. While some teachers apply on their own, most applicants are
nominated by their employing school districts as individuals of “high
promise.” Participants serve as interns
under mentor principals for one year while simultaneously attending classes.
Students who are on “paid sabbaticals” from school districts are required to
work in the sponsoring school district after completing the program.
All students in
the master’s degree program in educational leadership at East Tennessee
State University move through the degree program as part of a cohort
group. Students are selected on the
basis of academic credentials, experience and leadership potential. They are required to complete an extensive,
focused field experience as part of the program. Students also develop a professional
portfolio, the presentation and committee review of which serves as a
culminating experience. Development of the portfolio provides each student with
opportunities for reflection and self-evaluation. The portfolio also serves to
spotlight skills and accomplishments that will be of interest to future
employers. Students are assessed through such strategies as written
examinations, videotaped performances, materials development, research
projects, and oral presentations.
The state of
Kansas is moving toward competency-based courses in educational
administration. Wichita State
University’s innovative program leads to building-level licensure and a
master’s degree in educational administration.
Students begin the program with a cohort that becomes their “learning
family” during the two-year program.
They begin to work “in the real world” of school leadership from the
start. With the guidance of a mentor
(usually the student’s building principal), they assess their own strengths and
weaknesses and identify strengths and weaknesses in their school. Students capitalize on strengths and work to
correct weaknesses — individually and organizationally — throughout the
two-year program. The program requires
33 credit hours of coursework plus a comprehensive examination during the last
semester of enrollment. The required curriculum, delivered through seminars and
complementary practica, is focused on educational leadership and school
finance; interpersonal relations and supervision; school law and personnel
management; curriculum and learning theory; school closing and school opening;
and diversity and social justice.
Three additional
university-based programs conducting business in different ways were brought to
our attention: the Principal Licensure
Program (PLP), Antioch McGregor University; the Principal Leadership Institute
(PLI), University of California, Berkeley; and the First Ring Leadership
Academy, Cleveland State University.
The PLP at Antioch McGregor University is designed for educators
who (1) want to be school principals in the state of Ohio, (2) have a master’s
degree from an accredited regional college or university and (3) meet the
state’s requirements for licensure. It is a reality-based program focused on
four themes: establishing trust,
empowering stakeholders, reframing school structures, and creating new
opportunities. The collaborative
approach combines Antioch’s tradition of addressing intellectual, emotional and
ethical development with organizational management skills. Students learn through real challenges,
interaction with successful school and district leaders, and guided inquiry
into real school problems.
The Kenneth E.
Behring Center for Educational Improvement at the University of
California, Berkeley houses the PLI, an initiative to prepare a new
generation of leaders for urban schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The PLI assumes that administrators should
be educational leaders first and foremost, knowledgeable about instructional
alternatives and able to work collegially with teachers to improve the quality
of teaching and learning. Students become familiar with the broadest possible
range of reforms and are able to understand the processes of change in order to
implement reforms. Strong relationships
with area school districts facilitate field experiences, provide feedback on
the program, and ensure a strong link between university coursework and urban
school reality.
In a
one-of-a-kind collaboration, the 13 school districts surrounding the city of
Cleveland joined forces with Cleveland State University to create The
First Ring Leadership Academy for aspiring school principals. Participants hold various positions in first
ring school districts and have identified their desire to become school
leaders. The non-traditional curriculum
is performance-based and wrapped around the ISLLC standards. The field-based application of best
practices occurs under the critical guidance of an exemplary principal. The Academy has special authorization from
the Ohio Department of Education to serve as an alternative route to principal
licensure. A Masters degree + the
Academy + the successful completion of the Praxis = grounds for licensure. Twelve graduate credits of traditional
educational administration courses are waived!
Reform
Programs in Universities — Outside Colleges of Education
The principal
preparation program at the University of Central Arkansas is now housed
in the Graduate School of Management, Leadership and Administration. It is a performance-based program that is
aligned with ISLLC standards and focused on providing prospective
administrators with the skills necessary to effectively lead schools in the 21st century.
In a bold innovation
designed to meet new demands, Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey, Camden, has created a new strand in its public administration
program, Educational Policy and Leadership.
Fifteen Camden school district teachers, selected by the school district,
will participate in a three-year program emphasizing policy analysis,
leadership strategies, communications skills and systemic school reform. The program includes an internship mentored
by a Rutgers faculty member. Graduates
will receive the MPA degree and fulfill the requirements for a
certificate of eligibility as a school principal in New Jersey.
Partnerships
Between School Districts and/or Other Organizations
The partnership
between the University of North Texas and the Dallas Independent
School District is setting a high bar for principal preparation programs
and for partnerships. As a starting
point, the partners agreed on seven qualities that the leaders produced by the
preparation program would possess (see Box 1). The district
taps individuals of high promise, selecting teams of teachers who can meet the
university’s admission requirements and who have the potential to become
outstanding school leaders. The two- to
four- member teams use their schools as learning laboratories, conducting
site-based projects and activities designed to lead to school improvement.
The Holyoke
Public School System is partnering with the University of Massachusetts
to develop a leadership development program whose ultimate goals are to enhance
student outcomes and the satisfaction of various community stakeholders. Key interventions include a two-year,
onsite, NCATE-approved research- and problem-based program leading to a Massachusetts
certificate for 18 aspiring principals (and a three-year professional
development program in which every principal and assistant principal will
participate on a monthly basis during the school year). Holyoke principals will serve as mentors for
certification candidates. The U.S.
Department of Education’s School Leadership Program provides funds to support
this initiative.
Nontraditional Providers