3.4 Reality check: designing a new leadership program for the 21st

School improvement cannot occur without good leadership, and leadership knowledge and skills cannot be developedwithout sound school leadership preparation programs.Today, the best school leaders have cultivated their craft through many yearsof experience, dependent upon trial and error and self-reflection, and professional development. However, this method does not meetthe need to produce the quantity of quality school leaders needed to turn around poor and failing schools and school districts. Areport by the Southern Regional Education Board (2006) stated,“Given the urgency for increased student achievement, it would seem that redesigning principal preparation programs around leadershippractices that have a high impact on students’learning would be a high priority at every university. Yet, it is not”(p. 2). The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 (U.S. Department of Education,2000) and research substantiates both a scant supply of talented candidates to lead schools and the importance of these individualsin improving student achievement (Mazzeo, 2003).

For the past decade, university school leadership preparation programs have been under vigorous scrutinyby such researchers as Levine (2005) and Murphy (1992). For example, Levine (2005) claimed the quality of most preparationprograms for school leaders ranges from“inadequate to appalling”(p.24). In the Accidental Principal, Hess and Kelly (2005) stated that when the contents of 31 programs across the United States werestudied, researchers concluded that principals are not mastering the skills necessary to lead school improvement and increasestudent achievement in the 21st Century.

The Research Base of School Leadership Preparation Programs

Recent research has focused on the need to redesign principal preparation programs to select the best andbrightest teacher leaders, provide skills to lead teachers in increasing student achievement, and meet the challenges ofstandards-based accountability (Grogan&Andrews 2002; Portin, Knapp, Murphy&Beck, 2003) According to Murphy (1992), the most potent forces for leadership development occur in the contextof ongoing field work rather than formal classroom settings. When colleges teach subject matter in isolation of field experience,this knowledge has little or no transference to practice (Murphy, 1992). Consequently, the concern of school leaders and researchersis that the knowledge graduate candidates learn in university classrooms is inapplicable to real-life situations and challengesfor school improvement.