Policymakers and the public are demanding high and rigorous standards for students and teachers. While these are needed, of course, we also must make a concerted effort to ensure the quality of educational leadership.
ASCD is concerned that current programs to prepare administrators separate, rather than integrate, programs for elementary principals, secondary principals, curriculum directors, and superintendents. We believe that all administrators require knowledge in the same broad areas. Preparation programs should forge linkages among job roles, functions, and processes, modeling the collaboration and cooperation essential in our schools.
We also believe that educational leaders should be able to demonstrate, at the conclusion of their graduate programs, not simply that they have completed a prescribed set of courses, but that they have mastered the skills necessary to assume leadership roles in the schools of today and tomorrow. If we expect our K–12 schools to demonstrate effective, performance-based assessment of students, our universities should do the same in their administrator preparation programs.
To promote these changes, ASCD has been collaborating with other associations for the past year to craft a set of guidelines for graduate programs in educational leadership. Ultimately, these guidelines will be presented to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) for approval. ASCD has joined with three administrator organizations and two university groups—the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA), and the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA)—in a working group convened by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration. Obviously, developing these guidelines has required extensive cooperation.
Performance-Based Standards
The guidelines set standards for graduate programs for principals, curriculum directors, supervisors, and superintendents. They specify the knowledge and skills that graduates of such programs should understand and be able to demonstrate. The guidelines take a holistic approach to administrator preparation, because tomorrow's school leaders will need skills that cross traditional job roles.
The draft guidelines include 11 knowledge and skills domains integrated under four broad areas: strategic leadership, organizational leadership, instructional leadership, and political and community leadership. They also include one process domain: the internship. The guidelines encourage universities to apply appropriate adult learning strategies and to design curriculums in an integrated or problem-based mode to underscore the connectedness of knowledge and skill areas in educational leadership.
The guidelines are stated as outcomes, because program evaluation should be based on outcomes criteria. While instructors may use an array of methodologies and resources, the guidelines promote learning experiences that closely resemble the actual demands of the workplace. Finally, we expect the internship to provide generous opportunities to synthesize and apply the knowledge and skills required by the objectives of the program.
The proposed guidelines also call for the formation of an NCATE Constituent Council to establish and coordinate review teams that will assess portfolios—tangible evidence that programs in educational leadership produce graduates who can meet the performance standards. For example, to demonstrate that graduates can apply conflict resolution techniques as needed in the workplace, a university program might submit a videotape of a simulation in which students use such techniques; several samples of reflective journals kept by students during their internships, describing conflicts and the processes they used to solve them; and several documented observations by supervisors, detailing how their interns applied various conflict resolution techniques.
Next Steps
The next step in the NCATE approval process calls for AASA, ASCD, NAESP, and NASSP officially to endorse the guidelines with whatever qualifications they wish to make. The Policy Board's working group will forward the guidelines to NCATE in May. NCATE will then circulate the document to universities and state departments of education for comment, prior to consideration of the final submission by the National Policy Board sponsors and NCATE. We anticipate NCATE approval in September 1995.
In developing these guidelines, ASCD and its partners have taken a major step to improve programs in educational leadership for principals, curriculum directors, supervisors, and superintendents, and to help ensure that schools of education are strengthened to meet the standards expected of our current and future educational leaders.