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PPI | E-newsletter | March 22, 2005 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin: Vol 5, No 6 http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=110&subsecid=900001&contentid=253252 Challenging LeadershipArthur Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College, recently launched a firestorm when he stated the obvious: Too many schools of education offer courses that are basically time wasters. Such criticisms may be familiar to Bulletin readers -- and anyone else reading something besides a handful of journals -- but they're particularly striking coming from Levine who, as president of the nation's premiere school of education, has generally been seen as an advocate for ed. schools. To his credit, Levine's criticisms spring from a four-year study of administrator preparation that he recently completed. He found that schools of education have been weakened by low admission criteria, irrelevant coursework, and unskilled faculty members. Among school administrators Levine polled for the study, half felt their graduate training failed to prepare them to deal with in-school politics, one-third felt ill-prepared to work with parents and other constituents, and 31 percent felt unable to handle test-based accountability. Levine proposes addressing these problems through shorter and more research-based programs, and with professional development for administrators throughout their careers. In particular, he recommends eliminating the Ed.D degree, a doctorate in education, and instead offering prospective principals and superintendents a "Masters of Education Administration," similar to an MBA. Whether or not education schools take Levine's critiques to heart, it's clear that states' and schools' demands for skilled leaders prepared to meet the challenges of test-based accountability and NCLB are bringing about reform anyway. A variety of programs -- including New Leaders for New Schools, The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, The Broad Residency in Urban Education, National Institute for School Leadership, New York City Leadership Academy, San Diego Educational Leadership Development Academy, KIPP charter schools' principal training model, and Boston Aspiring Principal Training--have sprung up as alternative ways to prepare skilled individuals from a variety of backgrounds to become school and district leaders. For example, New Leaders for New Schools, an intensive principal training program, has partnered with the state of Maryland to run a principal certification program in the Baltimore public school system. Previously, only schools of education could directly certify principals. With half of Baltimore's principals slated to retire in the next few years, the district desperately needs new leaders, and this initiative will eventually train 40 principals who will lead 20 percent of the district's schools. New Leaders candidates are extensively screened and highly qualified. Out of the hundreds who apply annually for their fellowship programs in cities around the country, only a handful are selected, and most finalists have unique backgrounds in teaching or running nonprofit organizations. New Leaders fellows enroll in an intensive summer training institute focused on management and instructional leadership strategies as well as a year-long, full-time "medical style" residency in an urban public school, where they shadow an exemplary public or charter school principal. Once candidates are placed in their own schools, New Leaders provides three years of on-the-job coaching. Similarly, Larry Rosenstock, the principal of San Diego's High Tech High and a former faculty member at Harvard's Ed School, is now running his own teacher preparation program that produces teachers fully licensed in the state of California. The sort of creativity shown by Rosentock and New Leaders is a harbinger of things to come. Hopefully the Ed Schools will be in the game, because it's not good for a profession to have no strong roots in the academy, but this train is clearly leaving the station whether or not they get their act together. Further Reading: (Note: click on the URL for the file at its source location; click on the TITLE for the file on this class web.) "Study Finds Poor
Performance by Nation's Education Schools," "Study Blasts
Leadership Preparation," Jeff Archer, Education Week (03/16/2005): "New Leaders Group to Train Principals in
Baltimore," [pdf] New Leaders for New Schools: [pdf] The Broad Foundation: [pdf] "An
Innovative Look, A Recalcitrant Reality," [pdf] "A License to Lead?" [pdf]
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