ATLANTA – About 200 state and school district leaders from across the 16 Southern Regional Education Board states and several other states gathered for a major summit here Thursday and Friday to learn about their progress — and the work that remains — to improve the quality of K-12 school leaders.
The SREB Challenge to Lead Goals for Education, approved by the region’s leaders in 2002, call for states to ensure that all schools have effective leaders who can help improve student achievement — and leadership begins with a high-quality school principal.
SREB Senior Vice President Gene Bottoms and Betty Fry, director of SREB leadership research, spoke at the conference about state and local education officials' efforts to improve school leadership. They examined each state’s progress on developing a school leadership system that is focused on improving schools and student learning.
States need to upgrade their statewide standards for school leaders to include much more emphasis on the principal’s responsibilities for improving student learning, Bottoms said, but few have done so. School leadership standards in Alabama, Maryland and Texas focus on the knowledge and skills that support improved student learning. But none of the 16 SREB states has developed criteria to measure principals’ performance on state school leadership standards.
Three SREB states are making "promising progress" on purposeful recruitment, selection and enrollment in training programs of prospective principals, Fry said: Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. These states have created state policies or regulations that drive universities and school districts to work together to choose highly qualified candidates for master’s degree programs that prepare principals. States can make more progress by creating master’s degree programs for teacher-leaders, so that there is an advanced degree focused on improving classroom strategies for teachers who are leaders but may not wish to be principals. Seven of the 16 SREB states have made progress on this indicator in recent years.
Eight states have made "promising progress" on redesigning university-based preparation programs for aspiring principals, Fry said: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee and Virginia. These states have begun or are poised to redesign master’s degree programs for aspiring principals to focus primarily on developing instructional leaders who know how to improve student achievement and drastically improve low-performing schools. In some cases, states have appointed out-of-state expert panels to approve the design of revised master’s degree programs. Programs failing to meet quality standards no longer will be authorized to train principals. States can take next steps by requiring out-of-state degrees to meet higher standards, and by ensuring all master’s degree programs are of higher quality (not just some of them or at leading schools). "We’ve (still) got some diploma mills" that graduate principal candidates, Bottoms said during the conference.
Seven of the 16 SREB states have made "promising progress" in requiring principal candidates to have more in-school experience, or on-the-job problem solving, as part of their preparation, she said. Aspiring principals should be required to work in schools and develop the skills they will need to solve instructional problems and improve student achievement. Universities and schools need to be held jointly accountable for high-quality internships. Otherwise, too few principals have actual experience they can bring to the important job of leading and improving schools. Field experiences also need to include rigorous assessments of competencies.
Principal licensure needs to be retooled in many states so that school leaders can ensure that only high-quality candidates receive a state credential, she added. Licensure should relate to the state’s school leadership standards so that a principal’s competency is measured based on their skills and abilities to improve schools — not simply their educational credentials. Half of the 16 SREB states have made progress since 2002 on basing professional-level licensure for principals on the ability to improve schools and student achievement.
Fry said that four states have made "promising progress" on opening access to the principal’s job to professionals who already hold master’s degrees and can develop their leadership skills through alternative-preparation programs and on-the-job experience in schools. Those four states are: Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Half of the 16 SREB states have made progress in this area since 2002.
States also need to make more progress in training and supporting teams of leaders to improve traditionally low-performing schools, she said. Good principals alone cannot vastly improve struggling schools; such schools also need teacher-leaders, trainers, academic coaches and others who can work together to raise achievement. School improvement cannot stop when a talented principal moves away or leading teachers depart. Ten of the 16 SREB states have made progress since 2002 in developing training academies and other strategies to help leadership teams in traditionally low-performing schools learn about research-based strategies for school improvement. During the conference, teams of state leaders spent time discussing and developing strategies to improve this area of work.
Several state leaders committed during the conference to continuing their states' progress on improving school leadership.
Virginia State Superintendent of Public Instruction Billy Cannaday said he will discuss with the state education board at a retreat later this month a plan to provide more rewards and incentives for improved school leaders. Cannaday said the state needs to do more to help school districts and university-based training programs for principals build their capacity to assist schools with improvement strategies and leadership practices. He added that the state needs to help each high school set annual targets for improving graduation rates, and that the state is benefiting from student achievement data gathered through online tests. He said Virginia now offers about 70 percent of its high school end-of-course tests (some of which are required for graduation) online.
Richard Laine, The Wallace Foundation’s director of education, spoke at dinner on Thursday on the foundation’s new report, Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs. Laine said during a panel discussion Friday that states and school districts need to create stronger systems of school leaders who can continue improvement strategies even when gifted, well-trained principals move away or proceed to other jobs. "Don’t allow superheroes to save the day," he said. Schools need teams of leaders, so that "mere mortals" can continue to help schools improve even after dynamic principals move on. A grant from The Wallace Foundation supports SREB's leadership work.
Mississippi State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds spoke frankly about his state’s needs to raise the quality of training and preparation for school leaders. A new section of the state education department is focusing on leadership issues, he said. The state is planning a two-year interim license that will require new principals and district superintendents to prove their abilities to improve schools. Additional levels of licensure will be added based on school leaders’ accomplishments and training, he said. Bounds also spoke of his state’s intent to "build a very aggressive time line" for requiring all university-based master’s degree programs that train principals to redesign themselves around "rich, descriptive performance standards that are very measurable." Mississippi required such a redesign of master’s degree programs about a decade ago, but Bounds said, "There hasn’t been any follow-up in our state to make sure continuous improvement is going on" in all of the degree programs. The state also needs stronger, well-trained mentors for aspiring principals and superintendents, he said. The state needs master’s degree programs designed for teacher-leaders so that teachers who want to reach higher pay levels are not forced to earn degrees designed for principals; nearly half of the state’s 7,900 licensed school administrators do not work as administrators, he noted.
Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools Sandy Garrett said during a panel discussion Friday that she plans to create a school leadership initiative in her state that features a "brand" that allows educators and the public to be better-informed about the work to improve school leadership. Oklahoma needs to raise the quality of training for principals and school superintendents, she said. Much the same way federal law now requires a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom, Garrett said every principal should be highly qualified, as well.
Arkansas State Representative David Cook spoke of his state’s efforts to boost the quality of school leadership. He said state lawmakers are paying more attention to school leadership in part because of the state’s school-finance lawsuit and resulting legislative action. The state needs to provide stronger mentor principals for administrators in traditionally low-performing schools, he said.
For more information about your state’s progress in improving school leadership, or to learn more about this conference and the leaders from your state who attended, contact SREB Communications.
SREB, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, advises state education leaders on ways to improve education. SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Each is represented by its governor and four gubernatorial appointees.
