Contents

The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training

• Executive Summary
• Five Lessons in Leadership Training
• All Together Now
• Pathways to Better Training: Five Lessons

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The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training

With Encouragement From School Districts, Universities and Nonprofits are Sharing Strategies on How to Train Principals.

By Jennifer gill

What would happen if representatives of competitive principal-training programs gathered in a room and compared notes on issues like how to recruit strong candidates? Chicago is about to find out, thanks to the Chicago Leadership Collaborative, a new $7 million initiative supported by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and private funders.

"They know that they don't know everything and are willing to learn from each other."

The initiative seeks to create a pool of highly qualified school leaders by offering financial support to selected university and nonprofit training providers: They will be on a performance contract that compensates them for each candidate who passes the district's principal eligibility assessment. The effort is also intended to increase to 100 (from the current 32) the number of yearlong internships the school system makes available to the programs' aspiring leaders.

These enticing carrots come with a stick: The programs must meet together monthly to share best practices on everything from curriculum content to internship experiences. Almost all principal training programs have room to improve, says Steve Gering, chief of leadership development at CPS, as evidenced by the following:

Currently, only 40 percent of training program participants who complete district internships actually go on to become principals or assistant principals. The rest fail the district's assessment process, aren't selected by a local school council, or decide the job isn't for them. Where some programs are wary about divulging their strategies with the competition, "at the same time, they know that they don't know everything and are willing to learn from each other," Gering says.

CPS has chosen four programs to take part initially - Loyola University Chicago, New Leaders, Teach for America/Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The first class of aspiring school leaders is expected to matriculate in fall 2013. Gering hopes that eventually most of Chicago's new principals will come through Collaborative-supported programs.

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