Principal Preparation Programs Equipping school leaders for new pressures and challenges. By Kevin Butler September 2008

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A school principal's job has never been tougher.

The accountability movement—culminating with the federal No Child Left Behind law in 2001—has put pressure on principals to improve student performance, resulting in school leaders’ transitioning from a more administrative role to becoming more heavily involved in assessment, instruction, curriculum and data analysis.

But are today’s leadership programs in graduate schools of education adequately readying new principals to handle these seemingly ever-increasing responsibilities? According to a 2006 survey by Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization that reports public opinion and public policy issues, nearly two-thirds of principals felt that typical graduate leadership programs “are out of touch” with today’s realities. The good news is that a host of principal leadership development programs are aiming to fill the gap, striving to ensure that new and veteran principals are better prepared for today’s challenges.

Such programs can be off ered by the state, district or an outside organization, and they can focus on everything from emotional intelligence issues and classroom walkthroughs to data analysis andteam building.

Many principal training programs focus on the new role they assume in instructional leadership amid accountability pressures to raise student achievement.

Some programs focus on a specific set of skills and are tied to a particular educational philosophy and methodology.

Teachscape, a for-profit professional development services company, bases its instructional leadership training on the “high-yield strategies” developed in research by Robert Marzano, an education consultant and senior scholar at Midcontinent Research for Education and Learning. Examples of such teaching strategies include summarizing, note taking, and cooperative learning.

Teachscape’s Classroom Walkthrough with Refl ective Practice, which is a process and set of tools, trains principals and other instructional leaders in classroom observation protocols to recognize and track teachers’ use of Marzano’s techniques, says Cheryl Williams, Teachscape’s vice president.

To facilitate such tracking, the company provides high-tech help. Principals are trained to use wireless PDAs—such as Palm Pilots—with custom software to quickly check off which teaching practices they observe during the classroom visit.

After making observations, the data are uploaded and compiled in customized reports for principals.

Principals can use the results as springboards for discussions with teachers on how to improve or as important clues to what exactly are the professional development needs at that school. The data are not meant to serve as an evaluative tool, but rather as a guide for which areas might need to be strengthened, Williams says.

“It’s an observational tool to give principals the data they need to decide where their teachers need support,” says Williams, who recommends that districts first receive instruction on high-yield strategies before learning about the PDAs.

This year, Vickie Nelson, an elementary school principal in the Granville County Public Schools in North Carolina, along with other principals and instructional leaders in the district began using Teachscape and Palm Pilots to record observations. Nelson says the tools allow her and her assistant principals to be on the same page in terms of observations, such as whether students are taking notes or engaging in active listening. “It causes my assistant principal and me to collaborate more about certain teachers so we can agree that we are seeing the same things,” she says. “So we get together and talk about a teacher’s strengths and weaknesses” to work with the teacher to improve their skills, she adds.

Principals can’t do it alone given the demands. Some programs focus on the idea of a principal facilitating a leadership team, focusing on collaborative initiatives.

The Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) recommends that not just principals go through its leadership training program but also that “leadership teams,” including department chairs, do so. Cheryl Gray, the education board’s coordinator of leadership curriculum, development and training, describes the two main principles of the group’s philosophy: “The work of the principal to improve student achievement is significantly about curriculum and instruction, and, secondly, the principal cannot do it alone but must do it in collaboration with a leadership team,” she says.

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