Preparing School Leaders

Principals play a vital role in setting the direction for successful schools, but existing knowledge on the best ways to prepare and develop highly qualified candidates is sparse. What are the essential elements of good leadership? What are the features of effective pre-service and in-service leadership development programs? What governance and financial policies are needed to sustain good programs? The School Leadership Study: Developing Successful Principals is a major research effort that seeks to address these questions. Commissioned by
The Wallace Foundation and undertaken by the Stanford Educational
Leadership Institute in conjunction with The Finance Project, the study examines eight exemplary pre- and in-service program models that address key issues in developing strong leaders. Lessons from these exemplary programs may help other educational administration programs as they strive to develop and support school leaders who can shape schools into vibrant learning communities. Citation: Darling-Hammond, L., LaPointe, M., Meyerson, D., Orr. M. T., & Cohen, C. (2007).
Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership
Development Programs. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Stanford Educational Leadership
Institute.
This report can be downloaded from http://seli.stanford.edu or http://srnleads.org.
This report was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and produced by the Stanford
Educational Leadership Institute in conjunction with The Finance Project and WestEd.
© 2007 Stanford Educational Leadership Institute (SELI). All rights reserved.

Getting Principal Preparation Right
Our nation’s underperforming schools and children are unlikely to succeed until we get serious about leadership. As much as anyone in public education, it is the principal who is in a position to ensure that good teaching and learning spreads beyond single classrooms, and that ineffective practices aren’t simply allowed to fester. Clearly, the quality of

References: UCEA/TEA-SIG Taskforce on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs based on conceptual work by Orr (2003), national leadership standards (ISLCC and ELCC), Leithwood and Jantzi’s (1999) leadership effectiveness research, and Leithwood and colleagues’ (1996) research on leadership preparation program effectiveness Program experiences. The study included six measures of program features. These items were based in part on Leithwood and colleagues’ (1996) research on effective leadership preparation and Orr and Barber’s (2004) research review. Two measures are sets of items that used a five-point Likert scale (1=not at all measuring positive (four items) and negative (four items) beliefs about the principalship, drawn in part from Pounder and Merrill’s (2001) and Dituri’s (2004) research on aspirants’