Contents

Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs

• Getting Principal Preparation Right
• Executive Summary
• The Findings
• Principal Learning in Action
• Implications for Policy and Practice
• Implications for policy makers
• Conclusion

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Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs

The study points to two primary implications for policymakers.

First, the design, quality, and impact of principal preparation and development programs can be significantly shaped by purposeful state and district policies. The positive impact of a comprehensive and supportive state and district policy infrastructure is most dramatically illustrated by Mississippi. Following recommendations of a state Task Force on Administrator Preparation made more than a decade ago, the state set out to overhaul its entire system for recruiting, preparing, and developing school leaders. Reforms in Mississippi were wide-ranging and in some cases dramatic. These included redesigning programs to align with NCATE's ambitious accreditation standards and closing programs that did not meet the standards; upgrading administrator licensing requirements for pre-service, induction, and ongoing learning; coordinating all in-service professional development for school administrators through a state-level leadership institute; and creating an innovative year-long, fully funded sabbatical program to train teachers for the principalship in programs that offer a full-year internship.

Mississippi principals outranked their colleagues in our national and state samples of principals on almost every attitudinal and behavioral measure of leadership effectiveness. Driven by top-down as well bottom-up initiatives, Mississippi's policy infrastructure involved deep coordination and collaboration by districts and universities, and it required a sustained commitment of political will and financial resources. It employed all three of the major policy strategies we identified: 1) purposeful use of standards to leverage change, 2) support for the active recruitment and development of aspiring principals, and 3) development of a state infrastructure for on-going learning.

Second, state and district financing policies are critical. At the most fundamental level, what programs are able to accomplish, who they are able to recruit, and the choices that enter into program designs, depend profoundly on the sources, amounts, and stipulations of funding. If education policymakers at the state and district levels are committed to building leadership development into reform efforts, they must build in sufficient resources to support high-impact programs. Successful policies associated with raising standards are accompanied by resources that enable institutions to deliver programs to meet the new requirements. There is no getting around the fact that high-quality leadership preparation and development requires a comprehensive plan and significant financing commitment.

In particular, subsidies that allow candidates to engage in the critical hands-on work of a high-quality administrative internship seem central to the most powerful program designs. Funding for mentoring or networking for new principals also appears to enable new entrants to get stronger traction in implementing the more complex and sophisticated aspects of an instructional leadership agenda. A state's capacity to organize and offer highquality, ongoing professional development, through an academy or institute that can serve a range of needs, appears to help sustain learning opportunities for leaders in districts large and small.

Conclusion

Although the challenges are substantial, the lessons of this research are hopeful. First, it is possible to create systematic learning opportunities for school leaders that help them develop the complex skills needed to lead and transform contemporary schools. Second, programs that succeed in developing such leaders have a number of elements in common, including the nature of their curricula, the teaching and learning strategies they employ, the ways they organize communities of practice, and the kinds of clinical experiences they construct. Third, our review of distinctive models operating in diverse contexts illustrates that there are numerous ways to build such programs and to develop the partnerships and funding supports that enable them to survive and succeed. Finally, state and local leaders have begun to develop policy strategies that hold promise for eventually making such programs commonplace rather than exceptional. The collaborative effort needed is made worthwhile by the importance of developing a generation of strong, skilled leaders who can create schools that provide expert teaching for all students in settings where they can succeed.

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