The Leadership Mismatch: An Alternative View.

The declining interest of candidates in administration could be reversed by removing barriers for women

Concerted efforts to cultivate women's roles in educational leadership have been markedly absent in discussions about leadership preparation and administrator supply and demand.

These are serious omissions given that gender imbalance in K-12 public school leadership has been evident for a long time and most graduate students earning administrative credentials today are women. In addition, institutionalized obstacles limit women's entry and advancement in school administration.

These are times of considerable hand-wringing about the quality and quantity of applicants for current and predicted administrative vacancies in the public schools. We believe a solution to the supply-and-demand mismatch is in hand.

We take an alternative view of the administrator shortage that plagues some districts and states. In fact, we argue that prospective leaders already exist in the educational system and the only thing needed is to remove the obstacles in the paths of these emerging leaders. In short, women educators can be a key to resolving the declining supply of administrative candidates, but only if certain policies and practices are improved.

Breaking Barriers

What specific actions can be taken to remove obstacles that prevent public schools from benefiting from the existing female talent? What changes can be made to the system so that qualified women have access to administrative positions? We offer five recommendations.

* Recommendation No. 1: Examine the discriminatory consequences of recent state policy directions for administrative certification.

Some states are opening doors to prospective educational leaders without previous professional experience in the schools. Sometimes this involves developing or changing state policies to promote fast-track routes to administrative certification. Other times it means waiving existing policies requiring teaching experience or educational administrative certification for particular hiring situations.

For example, The School Administrator reported in June that 28 such nontraditional superintendents are serving or have served America's school districts since 1988. These include former businessmen, former military officers, former attorneys and individuals with a wide variety of other government, corporate and executive backgrounds.

At the same time that some states are lowering the bar for noneducators' entry into school administration, many states are also considering or implementing increasingly rigorous standards for the acquisition of administrative certification by experienced educators. While the first approach has the potential to increase future administrator supply, the second can exacerbate supply problems.

Moreover, this combination of policies can have unfair consequences by gender. How so? Because business, military and government leaders are predominantly male, while teachers and students in graduate leadership programs are predominantly female. Thus, this two-pronged approach to administrator certification policy results in facilitating the access of males while limiting the access of females. Regardless of intent, policies that favor one sex over another not only perpetuate longstanding gender imbalances in educational leadership, they also are discriminatory.

* Recommendation No. 2: Initiate policies that facilitate teachers' entry into administrative leadership.

To counterbalance the male-biased certification policies, acting affirmatively to support the leadership talent that exists within the teaching pool can be accomplished in various ways. With state funding, districts can offer incentives to prospective leaders, such as:

* Paid internships allowing teachers to support themselves and their families during a year of administrative apprenticeship;

* Sabbaticals and scholarships for educators completing leadership preparation degree programs;

* Loan forgiveness for administrative coursework, similar to opportunities offered to entice teachers to the most difficult assignments; and

* Cost-sharing collaborative arrangements with regional or county educational service providers to enable teachers with administrative potential to acquire internships and other leadership experiences beyond their own classrooms.

Precedents exist for state financial support to improve teaching or to encourage teachers to obtain certification in areas of shortage. For example, state funds have supported teacher mentoring initiatives, special education leadership development and certification of bilingual teachers. Funding to support emerging school leadership would be a similar investment in the future of our children.

Why are such supports needed at this time? And what does gender have to do with it? We know that a number of unnecessary bottlenecks occur at the entry gates of the potential administrator pipeline. For example, the costs of graduate study and the scarcity of quality administrative internships can limit educators' acquisition of administrative leadership experience and credentials. Several universities and professional organizations provide competitive scholarships and awards for graduate leadership study. But compared to the numbers of students enrolled in leadership preparation programs and the number of administrative vacancies needing to be filled, these supports benefit relatively few prospective administrators.

Similarly, some districts are able to provide opportunities that include high-quality leadership and management experiences for interns (for example, as deans, chairs, coordinators, staff developers, specialists of various sorts and assistant principals) by using local funds or existing federal, state or private grants. However, many other districts have few or no resources for administrative internships.

Without broad, consistently available access to full-time, regular-school-year internships, the best and brightest from universities' leadership preparation programs cannot gain the kinds of meaningful, entry-level experiences that will help them become the next generation of educational leaders. Moreover, prior research suggests that experiencing success with entry-level leadership responsibilities can inspire greater interest in administration--even for persons initially reluctant or undecided about pursuing formal positions of educational leadership.

Again, since women currently fill the majority of seats in university-based leadership preparation classes, state policies that financially support graduate students' acquisition and early use of their administrative degrees can yield long-term benefits. A particularly salient benefit is a deeper pool of certified administrators from which to eventually draw principals, directors, business managers, assistant superintendents and superintendents.

I quitable Incentives

* Recommendation No. 3: Increase incentives for experienced teachers to move into educational administration.

Attracting and retaining talented leaders will be impossible if moves into school administration do not compare favorably with the benefits earned by veteran teachers. Careful analyses are needed on a regional basis to compare the financial packages of entry-level administrators to 5-, 10- and 15-year teachers.

While salaries are a logical starting point, comparative studies also need to consider vacation, work-day and work-year schedules, compensation for supervising extracurricular activities and fringe benefits. Teacher pay is sometimes based on 186 work days, administrators on 220 days. So while annual administrative salaries may appear to be higher, little difference may exist when calculated on a per diem basis. After-school advising and coaching is often paid work for teachers but is expected with no additional compensation for administrators. In New York state, teachers earn one year of retirement credit for 10 months of work while administrators typically work 12 months to earn the same credit.

Although varying widely by district wealth, anecdotal evidence suggests teachers with the fewest years of experience are the only ones to gain financially by moving into entry-level administrative positions. Because of social and cultural issues like child-rearing responsibilities, women tend to pursue leadership roles later in life and with more years in the classroom than men. Thus the financial disincentives for entering administration from veteran teaching positions disproportionately affect females. Teachers already pay a high price by giving up tenure and seniority to enter educational administration. No one should be expected to take a step backwards in salary and benefits to serve as school leader.

What steps can local superintendents, school boards and state policymakers take to eradicate financial disincentives? Dedicate state-level allocations and reallocate local district funds.

Many districts' salary structures reward teachers for earning graduate credits beyond the bachelor's degree. It may be possible to reallocate these existing incentives so that using, rather than simply acquiring leadership credentials is rewarded. For example, service as a school administrator indicates putting to use the degree or certificate in educational leadership. In contrast, advancing on the teachers' salary schedule for having an administrative degree or certificate is an incentive for acquiring, not necessarily using, that advanced credential.

* Recommendation No. 4: Mentor strategically so men, women and educators of color are all encouraged to pursue school leadership positions.

What does strategic mentoring mean? It's a concept similar to succession planning but with the added value of emphasizing diversity. Incumbent school leaders identify three educators with potential to succeed them, being sure to avoid identifying only those who look like themselves racially, ethnically or by gender: One who could step into the job virtually immediately, perhaps on an emergency basis, and two who could be groomed for the position in three to five years.

After identifying these three potential successors, it then becomes critical to:

* Encourage, support and talk positively with these prospects about the benefits of leadership work. Too often, educators hear only about the challenges and dilemmas, not the rewards, of administrative leadership careers.

* Create opportunities for prospective administrators to expand their skills and gain increased leadership experience.

* Help proteges make connections to other school leaders and administrators since these informal networks are often important to on-the-job success and future professional advancement.

These recommendations integrate pro-active role modeling, mentoring and sponsorship, each of which has been found to contribute to the personal and professional growth of future administrators. Through these processes, more experienced administrative leaders introduce proteges to resources and materials, provide guidance and opportunities for site visits and share networking and emotional support. Mentors who can demonstrate effective ways to balance personal and professional lives are especially important for women, as they are more likely than men to be the primary caregivers for both children and aging family members.

Hiring Impact

* Recommendation No. 5: Provide equity training for school boards, administrators, selection committees and others who influence administrative hiring.

Mentoring and recruitment efforts are to no avail if those whose appearance differs from the traditional incumbents of school leadership roles are screened out during the selection and hiring process. It is important to raise the level of awareness among school board members, personnel directors, administrators, selection committees, search consultants and communities about subconscious and subtle gender biases that easily enter into paper screening and interviews of administrative applicants.

For example, narrow definitions of appropriate career paths often value secondary experience more highly than elementary, and line authority more than staff authority. These values disadvantage females because women's leadership experience is most likely to be in elementary and staff roles.

Moreover, particular job titles (rather than demonstrated leadership skills), often become the unwritten selection criteria upon which hiring decisions are made. Interestingly, no evidence suggests that a person who served as a high school principal makes a better superintendent than one who has been an elementary principal. Similarly, there is no evidence that the best disciplinarians are tall or the strongest leaders large-framed. Yet these outdated myths continue to shape employment decision making and limit the access of many talented women.

In New York stare, for example, the professional association for women administrators has developed an equity training package that is well suited for dissemination to these audiences at minimal or no cost. Other professional organizations and university personnel are also resources that can provide similar kinds of professional development for school boards and selection teams.

Opportune Moment

Numerous institutionalized practices contribute to mismatches between administrator supply and demand. For example, policies that provide incentives for early retirement accelerate the exit of experienced school and district administrators. At the opposite end of the career spectrum, disincentives exist for teachers to enter school administration. State policies often require teachers to re-earn tenure as an administrator or lose the ability to ever earn tenure in a particular role, such as the principalship or the superintendency.

Yet longstanding tenure and retirement policies survive as sacred cows, particularly resistant to change in the near term. Instead, our five feasible strategies have the potential to advance qualified women educators and ameliorate reported administrator shortages.

Today's increased emphases on student achievement and improved teaching and learning in America's schools makes this an opportune moment to capitalize on the curricular and instructional strengths that women often bring to educational administration. We urge speedy dismantling of all remaining barriers to women fulfilling their promise of leadership.

Marilyn Tallerico is an associate professor of educational leadership at Syracuse University