Published: 3/14/2005
At a time when high-quality
educational leadership is critically needed for the nation's schools, the
quality of most preparation programs for principals, superintendents and other
education leaders ranges from "inadequate to appalling," according to
a major study by Teachers College President Arthur Levine.
The four-year study, "Educating School Leaders,"
was based on an extensive national survey of deans, faculty, alumni, and
principals, as well as 28 in-depth case studies. It is part of a broader
four-part series of reports by Levine, known as The Education Schools Project,
drawn from the most extensive study ever conducted into the strengths,
weaknesses, and overall performance of the more than 1,200
The Project's first report --
released on March 12th -- comes at a time when the need to prepare dynamic,
visionary leaders has never been more acute. The nation's schools are
struggling to adapt to the profound changes called for under state improvement
plans and the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, even as more than 40
percent of principals and even higher percentage of superintendents, are
expected to leave their jobs over the next decades. Yet "Educating School
Leaders" finds that university-based education leadership programs are
simply not up to the task of filling the leadership vacuum. On the contrary,
asserts Levine, many of those programs are engaged in a counterproductive
"race to the bottom," in which they compete for students by lowering
admission standards, watering down coursework, and offering faster and less
demanding degrees.
Education schools are not
entirely to blame, Levine says. The downward trend is exacerbated, the study
finds, by states and school districts that reward teachers for taking courses
in administration whether or not the material is relevant to their work, and
whether or not those courses are rigorous. Further, many universities treat
leadership education programs as "cash cows," using them to bring in
revenue for other parts of the campus and denying them the resources that might
enable them to improve. And the expectations placed on education programs are
unrealistic.
"Schools and school systems
complain about the quality of people entering the leadership and teaching
professions, yet they are paying the low salaries that help determine the
applicant pool," Levine told Inside. "They complain that education
schools don't provide ongoing mentoring for new teachers once they're in the
job, yet no other professional school today performs that function. And all
teachers are expected to perform at an equal level, regardless of how long they
have been in the field - and typically new leaders and teachers are thrown into
some of the toughest schools. That's like saying to a new lawyer, thank God
you've finished law school, tomorrow you're arguing a case before the Supreme
Court."
Still, regardless of the causes,
the problems of leadership programs are visible and pronounced. "Too often
these new programs have turned out to be little more than graduate credit
dispensers. They award the equivalent of green stamps, which can be traded in
for raises and promotions, to teachers who have no intention of becoming administrators,"
says Levine.
"These programs have also
been responsible for conferring master's degrees on students who demonstrate
anything but mastery. They have awarded doctorates that are doctoral in name
only. And they have enrolled principals and superintendents in courses of study
that are not relevant to their jobs."
Offering a set of nine criteria
by which education leadership programs should be judged, Levine's report -
which was funded by the Annenberg Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Ewing
Marion Kaufmann Foundation -- calls for the elimination of incentives for
reducing program quality, higher standards for leadership programs, the
shuttering of poor-quality programs, and a new core curriculum of study. Levine
also argues that the Ed.D. degree in Educational Administration should be
eliminated and replaced by a new Masters in Educational Administration,
while the doctor of philosophy degree (Ph.D.) in school leadership should be
restructured and awarded solely to those who are preparing for a career in
research.
More specifically, the study
found that most education leadership programs are characterized by
An irrelevant curriculum. The
typical course of study "amounts to little more than a grab bag of the
survey classes" - such as Historical and Philosophical Foundations of
Education, Educational Psychology, and Research Methods - taught elsewhere in
the education school with little relevance to the job of school leader. Nearly
90 percent of program alumni surveyed said that schools of education fail to
adequately prepare their graduates to cope with classroom realities.
Meanwhile, the drum beat of
competition sounds louder and louder. The study notes that practitioners and
policy makers have created an array of alternatives to prepare school leaders -
including programs operated by states, school districts, school networks, and
private organizations. These alternative programs rely more on business school
faculty than educational leadership faculty, and they place a greater emphasis
on clinical experience than classroom-based learning. Yet the report notes that
there is little proof of their effectiveness. "At this point, we know that
the alternative programs are different than those found at universities,"
Levine writes. "But we have no idea whether they are better or
worse."
Further, the report notes that
university-based programs offer a number of advantages over possible
alternatives and suggests that, "It would be best if education schools and
their educational administration programs took the lead in bringing about
improvement. But the clock is ticking, and it would be a grave disservice to
our children and schools if the problems of the field remain unaddressed."
To that end, Levine and the
Education Schools Project will work during the coming months to promote
well-informed and non-partisan policy debate on how best to prepare the
teachers, administrators, and researchers who serve the nation's school
children.
"We must change the system
and find new models for establishing strong leadership in our schools,"
Levine says. "In the long term, I hope the report will play a part in
broadly changing the system nationally. But we'll begin by trying to turn our
recommendation into action on individual campuses and in some states."