transforming school LEADERSHIP.

In the coming years, districts will have the opportunity to recruit and train thousands of outstanding new principals -- school leaders who will have a major impact on the success of students in the new millennium.

U.S. schools are facing one of the most massive transformations of leadership in a century. By some estimates, more than half of all principals are expected to retire in the next five years. So schools and districts will have the unique opportunity and the significant challenge of recruiting, selecting, training and motivating an entirely new group of leaders. This turnover of administrators, though, is occurring at a time of decreasing applications and concerns about the difficulties of the job.

How can districts accomplish this formidable task -- maintaining and enhancing quality while facing a shortage of applicants? This article examines some of the reasons for the shortage, including the challenging work lives of principals. Then we turn to several approaches districts and states are taking to address the shortage, develop more skilled and knowledgeable principals and provide an ongoing pool of qualified candidates for positions in their schools.

There are no easy solutions and programs must fit the local context. But current practices provide a set of possibilities for California districts.

Replacing thousands of principals over the next five years with skilled, knowledgeable newcomers will not be easy, but it is a window of opportunity that will close quickly for districts. Once principals are selected, they may remain in their positions for a decade or more. Therefore, those who are hired will lead our schools in the new millennium and provide the foundation for their success or failure. Making careful selections now and providing significant professional development and support will be key to having successful leaders in our schools.

Complexities of principals' work

Though principals have not been the primary focus of recent reform efforts, they are needed to lead instructional improvement, foster effective change efforts, lead the implementation of new standards, and are central to shaping strong, professional school cultures (Deal and Peterson, 1998). But the best principals do not lead alone. Without principals encouraging and supporting teacher leadership, collaborative leadership will die. One seldom finds an effective school that does not have an effective principal.

The work of principals is enormously complex and demanding at the same time it is exciting and energizing. Mintzberg (1973) noted that managers' work is characterized by brevity, variety and fragmentation. This is especially true for school leaders. Principals' daily work is characterized by hundreds of short tasks of enormous variety -- one minute talking with a teacher about materials, the next coping with a student issue, followed by another dozen questions, issues and problems to be solved. Their work is constantly interrupted by the continuous stream of issues that have to be addressed, reports that have to be completed and people who want a piece of the principal's time. Effective principals must be able to lead within these quickly paced days and hundreds of interactions (Peterson, 1998).

Principals have always needed a variety of knowledge and skills to carry out the many activities they are responsible for, including:

* identifying and articulating the school's mission,

* providing instructional leadership,

* managing and administering policies and procedures,

* developing budgets and coordinating resource use,

* organizing improvement efforts,

* supervising staff and assessing student learning,

* building effective parent involvement programs, and

* shaping positive school cultures.

But recently there have been some changes in principals' work.

Increased demands

The work of principals has always been complex, but changes in schools, communities and educational policy approaches have increased the demands on these leaders and required new skills and often an even bigger time commitment. Over the past 10 years, the expectations for principals and schools have changed considerably, and several new expectations have evolved.

Principals now face greater responsibility for working with diverse communities and parents. There is significantly more accountability for student learning. There is more pressure to bring educational reforms and new programs into classrooms. And despite these new demands, in some regions or districts there has been significant salary compression, with new principals who must attend night meetings and other activities making the same or less on a per diem basis than some teachers (Kelley and Peterson, 2000; Peterson, 1999).

While these changes have expanded the knowledge and skills needed by principals, they may also have decreased the available pool of candidates. Good principals are central to good schools. How can the challenges of attracting, training and retaining excellent school leaders be met? Some districts are using a number of approaches to both increasing the pool of qualified candidates and the skills and knowledge new hires bring to their work.

Improving the pool of candidates

Hiring and retaining quality principals is complex and demanding. It involves not only identifying and selecting good leaders, it requires socializing them into the district culture and providing ongoing professional development and support.

Districts (and states) need first to identify and prepare a strong pool of candidates for the position. The pool needs to have many candidates who have strong skills. Simply having a university degree is not enough.

Second, the district needs to identify and select quality candidates. This means meaningful approaches to finding and selecting people, more than simple interviews and paper credentials.

Third, following selection, districts need to socialize new leaders into the norms and values of the culture as well as preparing them for the specific administrative tasks they require.

Fourth, during the first year as a principal in the district (or a principal anywhere) the new administrator should enjoy the support, coaching and socialization that will make their coming years highly productive and matched with the district.

Finally, as principals live their work lives in a district, they need to be motivated, inspired, provided opportunities for focused professional development and recognized for their accomplishments. Few districts and states have highly refined programs to address these areas well.

In the following section we discuss some of the approaches taken by a number of different districts, states and organizations to address the complex careers of principals. We have grouped these examples by the context of the district -- urban, suburban and rural, for each context faces a unique set of challenges in recruiting, selecting, socializing and training principals for their schools.

Current approaches

One of the challenges of identifying excellent programs for the recruitment, selection, training and retention of principals is that there is not a well-developed understanding of the career stages of the position. In addition, the various actors involved -- university preparation programs, district administrators, human resource managers, public agencies, private providers of professional development, policymakers and current principals -- are all important elements of a disjointed system that shapes the knowledge, skills and abilities of principals.

There are clearly promising practices out there, but they are often limited in scope, and disconnected from other aspects of a carefully staged, well-conceived career development trajectory for school leaders.

An enhanced system would provide a stronger relationship between the career stages of the principalship and the need for new skills and knowledge. There should be a rational developmental system from the identification of promising teacher leaders through the carefully planned and executed professional growth opportunities for experienced principals.

The following provides an overview of the types of programs currently in place to develop strong and effective school leaders, with attention to the special needs of urban, suburban and rural districts.

Urban districts

Many urban districts are facing massive retirements and need large numbers of replacement principals. Some larger districts have developed useful models for providing professional development for principals.

* In St. Paul, Minn., the district established an aspiring principals academy that offers three weeks of rigorous summer training in a beautiful offsite location combined with additional work during the year.

* In Cincinnati, local foundations and business leaders provided the funding for a state-of-the art facility, the Mayerson Academy, where district teachers and principals receive ongoing, focused training. District needs for leadership training are addressed by programs developed by academy staff.

* The Chicago Public Schools, in cooperation with the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, have developed some of the most comprehensive sequential programs for principals. With funding from the district and foundations, the association designed training for aspiring principals (LAUNCH), first-year principals (LIFT) and experienced administrators (IAA and the Chicago Academy for School Leaders, or CASL).

LAUNCH is an intensive summer program combined with an internship. LIFT offers first-year principals hands-on seminars and mentoring. CASL extends the learning of experienced principals with in-depth programs. All of these experiences are coordinated and use a variety of effective techniques, such as case study, simulation, reflective analysis and coaching.

Suburban and mid-sized districts

Suburban districts and those without hundreds of schools face different challenges. They often do not have the available resources for large programs or a large number of vacancies. Nonetheless, districts are seeking ways to improve leadership development.

* In Madison, Wis., the district has designed a cooperative program with the University of Wisconsin-Madison named the Grow Our Own Principals program. This program combines the wisdom of several retired principals who mentor the participants, a full-year internship in two schools, some university coursework, and a lot of discussion and interaction with practitioners. The district has found "graduates" of the program to understand the district well and move easily into principalships.

* In Kentucky, the University of Louisville works with a consortium of districts around the Louisville area to provide a focused, cohort-based principal preparation program with a strong experiential component. The program provides leadership training with an emphasis on leading schools within the standards-based accountability context of the state.

Rural districts

Rural districts face unique challenges in training new principals. Often far from population centers and with fewer resources and available positions, they must be creative in the ways they design their programs. Here are some of the approaches rural districts are taking to serve aspiring and new principals:

* Combining mentoring and other local programs with attendance at national training efforts such as the Harvard or Vanderbilt summer institutes, or regional summer programs offered by state or federal organizations.

* Using satellite programs such as "Requisites of a Leader" provided by professional development companies in conjunction with district meetings and programs.

* Involving aspiring principals in university or administrator association academies and programs along with follow-up sessions back in the district to apply what is learned to the particular context.

* Collaborating with other rural districts in designing cooperative programs for principals.

Other opportunities and programs

A number of other programs provide opportunities within a particular state context or nationally to support leadership development.

* In North Carolina, the state provides a loan forgiveness program to attract highly qualified promising candidates into principal training programs. The loans provide sufficient support for individuals to participate in two years of full-time study to obtain certification and a master's degree in educational administration. The state forgives the loans if the principal provides at least two years of full-time service in North Carolina.

* The national principal institutes at Harvard and Vanderbilt have been serving school leaders for more than 20 years, providing professional development to practicing principals. State associations also provide a wide array of programs for practicing principals. (ACSA's Principals' Center was developed in 1992 in collaboration with Harvard, using the model developed by Roland Barth. See the box on page 10 for more information about ACSA's programs.)

A look to the future

Every school deserves a good principal. In the coming years, districts and states have the opportunity to recruit, motivate and provide ongoing professional development for thousands of new leaders.

It is not enough to hire administrators who are certified -- districts should develop ways to recruit and train outstanding aspiring principals, design programs to ease the transition in the first year, and establish quality, career-long professional development programs. This is a small window of opportunity that can have a major impact on the success of students and teachers in the years to come.

New and aspiring principals as well as veterans can benefit from the quality professional development programs ACSA offers:

* Principals' Center Summer Institute is designed for practicing principals with at least three years experience. The Institute, which extends over 10 days, is designed to ignite conversations about leadership and values.

* Alumni Advanced Symposium allows Principals' Center alumni to interact with each other and with nationally recognized experts.

* Colloquium for New & Aspiring Principals is designed for co-administrators and others who aspire to the principalship. The program offers skills training and strategies for a successful principalship.

* Principals Academy is an intensive, seven-session academy designed to help refine applied leadership and management skills, approved for use in Tier II programs.

For more information, call ACSA's Educational Services Department at [phone] or [phone].

ATTRACTING AND KEEPING THE LEADERS WE NEED

The widespread shortage of qualified principals is a serious obstacle to school improvement efforts, a new report from the Educational Research Service has determined.

But despite the shortage, the report says districts often look for leaders who can "walk on water" and "wear a superhero's cape."

"The Principal, Keystone of a High-Achieving School: Attracting and Keeping the Leaders We Need," was produced at the request of the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

In addition to reviewing the research on the importance of effective principals, the report discusses reasons for the current shortage, approaches to eliminate barriers to recruiting and hiring the best candidates and ways to support new and aspiring principals.

The ERS asked current and past school principals for their thoughts on ways to attract, evaluate, train and retain quality principals. Their suggestions included the following:

* Encourage the creation of cohort groups of potential principal candidates within a district or a consortium of neighboring districts. The groups would offer training, discussion and work with experienced principals. The cohort would continue as a support system for new principals.

* Increase formal and informal opportunities for networking among new principals, and between experienced and new or aspiring principals.

* Implement the concept of a master principal, similar to that of the master teacher, with that person responsible for mentoring new principals.

* Provide opportunities for teachers and other staff members who are potential candidates for the principalship to learn more about the position. These opportunities should include time for training, as well as conversations with current principals.

* Provide opportunities for teachers who are good candidates for the principalship to assume leadership roles in the school.

* Offer internships for those interested in the principalship.

Superheros not always necessary

"We want and need high-quality, well prepared and committed people to lead our schools," the report concludes. "The question then must be: how do we prepare, attract and provide continuing support for these people. Superstars are not always necessary. Good people are available -- but the system has some major flaws that discourage many of them from applying for the position or from doing their best once they enter the principalship."

The report can be purchased from the ERS online catalog (www.ers.org) or by calling NAESP at 800-386-2377 or NASSP at 800-253-7746.

References

Deal, Terrence and Peterson, Kent (1998). Shaping School Culture: The Heart of Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Kelley, Carolyn and Peterson, Kent (2000). Principal Inservice Programs: A Portrait of Diversity and Promise. Paper prepared for the Carnegie Foundation and the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Mintzberg, Henry. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. New York: Harper Row.

Peterson, Kent (1998). "Realities and Reform: Living with the Daily Realities of Principals' Work." Instructional Leader. Texas Elementary Principals Association.

Peterson, Kent (1999). Principal Recruitment and Retention: Challenges and Opportunities. Paper prepared for the California School Leadership Academy.

Kent Peterson is a professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of "Shaping School Culture: The Heart of Leadership." Carolyn Kelley is an associate professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin Madison and a researcher for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.