What Makes a Leadership Preparation Program Exemplary?

Program Focus

Extremely important is that both the UTSA and UIC programs reflect an explicit mission that forms the scaffolding for all the elements of their respective programs. Such a strong focus often is lacking in educational leadership units, as has been noted in many program reviews (see Murphy, Moorman, & McCarthy, 2008).

The UTSA Urban School Leaders Collaborative (USLC) is a master’s/licensure program designed to prepare aspiring school principals who are committed to social justice advocacy. This focus affects the mind-sets, skills promoted, and all components of the curriculum. In line with this purpose, the program prepares leaders for schools with predominantly Latino populations, and two thirds of the participants in the program are Hispanic. It is significant that the focus of this preparation program is aligned with the department’s overall mission of preparing transformational leaders for diverse settings. Essential to the program’s mission is for the graduate students to become part of their school communities through an in-depth community project and for the student cohort to become a community itself. Another important feature of the UTSA-USLC program is to create safe places where students can reflect on their own experiences. Indeed, such shared critical reflection is a hallmark of this program.

In contrast to the UTSA’s focus on master’s-level preparation, the UIC program leads to an EdD in Urban Leadership. The UIC program also differs from the UTSA program by being divided into three discrete stages, with principal licensure available in the middle of the program rather than at the completion of the program when the EdD degree is awarded. In the UTSA 2-year program, the master’s degree and principal licensure are awarded simultaneously.

Like the UTSA-USLC master’s program, the UIC EdD is designed to prepare leaders to transform low-performing urban schools and districts. The following philosophy guides the UIC program: The school principal is most effective in leading school improvement when

s/he develops strong, trusting relationships, inspires a culture with high aspirations and expectations, engages individuals in leadership roles, creates sustainable conditions for common action, and builds professional communities focused on the continuous improvement of adult and student learning through collaborative data analysis and problem solving. (UIC application, p. 3)

The rigorous UIC program emphasizes results-oriented leadership that focuses on practitioner inquiry as the primary driver of school improvement. Students are expected to take major responsibility for their own learning, and they create leadership development plans in their first semester of the program. There also is a heavy emphasis on meeting the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Principal Competencies, and instead of a traditional dissertation, students complete a capstone meta-analysis case study of a theory in action in a school setting.

The UIC program is characterized by ongoing program development based on its revised program logic model that makes it explicit how school leaders influence school-wide improvement of student learning. This model, which provides the framework for the entire program, reflects current research on the important role that school leaders play in indirectly influencing student learning and the necessity for principals to distribute leadership across multiple fronts.

It is worth reiterating that an essential and somewhat unique feature of both of these programs is that everyone involved buys into the program focus, which permeates all aspects of the respective programs. This purpose is grounded in what works in practice and is the glue that holds these programs together and provides the basis for their continual improvement.

Student Recruitment and Selection

Rigorous student recruitment and selection processes are essential to establish exemplary leadership preparation programs (McCarthy, in press). Faculty members at both UTSA and UIC devote considerable energy to enrolling the right candidates in their respective preparation programs. The UTSA program seeks students who are committed to working in diverse environments and to being change agents to foster school improvement. Such commitments must be evident in the candidates’ statements of purpose and in their recommendation letters. Recruitment and selection of students for each closed cohort is a collaborative effort between the school district and the university. Potential students are nominated by program graduates who are asked to nominate one or two teachers who have leadership potential and predisposition toward social justice, and school district principals are asked to nominate two to three such individuals. Interestingly, the cohort members have been more diligent in recruiting future students for the program. This recruitment strategy resembles a “tapping” approach to identify aspiring leaders, which is promoted in some of the leadership recruitment and preparation literature (Myung, Loeb, & Horng, 2011).

The UIC program holds recruitment/information sessions on a bimonthly basis to inform potential candidates about the program. The frequency of these sessions has increased over time. Also, UIC widely distributes materials describing its EdD, and the program faculty are continuing to address ways to strengthen these recruitment activities.

The selection processes differ significantly between the two programs. At UTSA, the selection process is fairly traditional in that the candidates for the master’s program must have a bachelor’s degree, 2 years of teaching, 3.0 grade point average (GPA) out of 4.0, nomination/recommendation letter, and a purpose statement. As described by Merchant and Garza (2015), the department faculty members review only the candidates’ purpose statements and letters of recommendation after credentials are reviewed by the nominator and the graduate school. The entire review is based on the materials submitted, and UTSA emphasizes that its admissions process is designed to be inclusive. Candidates who exhibit the desired characteristics in terms of social justice, school improvement, and teaching in diverse cultural environments are solicited for the 2-year program, and all candidates who meet the above criteria are admitted. An important aspect of the UTSA program is to provide opportunities for those who have been historically disadvantaged.

In contrast to the UTSA selection process, the UIC program is billed as highly selective even though it admits similar size cohorts to its EdD as UTSA admits to the master’s program (about15-20 annually). At UIC, the candidates reaching the interview stage must present a school improvement plan as part of the 2-hr interview. In addition, they must produce an analysis of a video on site and bring a professional portfolio of evidence of their ability to meet the CPS Principal Competencies. This stringent interview process eliminates candidates who are not serious about making a commitment to the program. Candidates must also satisfy more traditional criteria (i.e., a 3.5 GPA, a master’s degree, letters of recommendation, and a record of successful teaching). Most candidates are people of color, and about half of those reaching the interview stage at UIC are accepted in the program.

Despite the significant differences in the recruitment and selection processes of these two programs, they both have strategies in place to attract candidates with the desired characteristics and commitment to social justice and school improvement in urban settings. These strategies are aligned with their program focus to further solidify their unified programs.

Program Personnel

For decades, there have been calls for educational leadership programs to have at least five full-time faculty members and for programs without a critical mass of faculty to be closed (National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration, 1987). A distinguishing element of both of these exemplary programs is that a large number of tenure-track and clinical faculty teach in them, and other district or auxiliary personnel serve as mentors, coaches, data analysts, directors, and related roles to support the programs. Another unique feature at UTSA is that all the faculty travel to schools in San Antonio to teach the courses, and some courses have been team-taught by university and school district personnel.

The UTSA program has had one director since its inception in 2003, and he has developed strong ties with the school district, even though there have been three different superintendents during this time. The stability of the program director is considered very important in making the UTSA-USLC program so successful (Merchant & Garza, 2015). Similarly, The UTSA Dean of the College of Education and Human Development has been a strong advocate of the program from its beginning. The importance of continuity of the program director and college dean and their solid support cannot be overstated.

University faculty members teach nine of the USLC courses, whereas school district employees teach the other three. Adjuncts are considered a major feature of the program in that they bring expertise into areas such as special education and school finance/budgeting. Although technically not program faculty, the students who graduate from the program serve as mentors for the subsequent cohorts, which has proven to be a very beneficial strategy to support the program.

A significant feature of the UIC program is that retired outstanding principals serve as coaches for the students in the program. As noted in the UIC application, the clinical faculty/coaches “are one of the strongest components” of the EdD program (p. 27). The director of coaching holds biweekly meetings of clinical faculty, and all faculty members involved in the EdD program meet bimonthly. Funding for the coaching positions is somewhat unique in that the university funds two clinical faculty in coaching roles; two more are funded through grants; and one is supported by the CPS. Of note is that 80% of the program’s faculty members initially were funded by the university, but this percentage has dropped over time to 66% being funded by UIC. Altogether there are nine full-time equivalent faculty involved in the EdD program now (compared with five full-time equivalent faculty originally), four of which are tenured faculty members. Courses are co-taught by UIC faculty with proven school district leaders who have full-time clinical appointments at UIC. The program faculty reflect a blend of tenure-track, clinical, and administrative roles in an effort to establish the optimum support for the program.

Both of these programs realize how important staffing is to the success of their leadership preparation programs. Not only is it crucial to have a critical mass of faculty involved, but appropriate administrative support for the program is also essential. To illustrate, UIC benefitted greatly from adding an academic program director after its program had been operating for several years. And the stability of the UTSA program leadership has been viewed as a key factor in the program’s sustainability.

District Partnerships

Genuine collaborations between school districts and universities help to bridge schisms between field-based practice and theory-based preparation (Jacobson, 1998; Orr, 2011). It is not a stretch to posit that strong university–district partnerships may be a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition for building an exemplary preparation program in school leadership. This is very much the case when it comes to understanding the success of both the UTSA and UIC programs. The commitments made in terms of time, money, and human resources by all players in the two programs mean that everyone (the universities, the districts, and the leadership candidates themselves) has put considerable “skin in the game.” These investments, ultimately intended to improve the life chances of all youngsters in their respective school systems, have given the partners a shared purpose in aligning their curricula to the needs of the districts, selecting the best possible leadership candidates from among their workforces, ensuring that their candidates’ field experiences and clinical internships/residencies are intensive and authentic, and finally, making sure that their most talented students become positioned to fast-track into school leadership opportunities. These aspiring leaders represent the future success of their preparation programs and school districts as they are the most important resources of the partnerships; scarce resources that cannot be wasted.

The strength and durability of the UTSA partnership is grounded in strong, long-standing personal relationships among key individuals whose commitment to the initiative can be traced to a time when the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) was experiencing a critical shortage of high-quality principals. Collaborative teaming of UTSA faculty members with adjunct faculty from the school district serving as program co-instructors has been central to aligning the program’s mission and curriculum with the district’s needs. Over time, these working relationships have allowed trust to build among individuals and across the organizations. One might view the USLC partnership as having been transformational in terms of the relationship between UTSA and SAISD. In fact, one major concern expressed by the award committee when reviewing UTSA’s application was about the potential disruptions that might occur to the program and the partnership if and when some of the key individuals retired. As important as these individuals have been to the development and success of the program, its future success obviously cannot depend on their continued presence—a caution for any exemplary program. Fortunately, program leaders recognize this issue and have already begun a process of succession planning so that future leadership transitions are anticipated and hopefully quite smooth.

The UIC partnership is perhaps a bit more transactional than UTSA’s, given the incredible level of financial support provided by the CPS for principal resident salary and benefits, leadership coaching and administrative support, as well as the development of principal competencies and eligibility assessments. But these supports are also transformative in terms of providing ongoing feedback for both the program itself and the CPS’s school improvement efforts. Moreover, as we will discuss further in the section on program outcomes and effectiveness, the metrics being developed by the UIC partnership, which attempts to map student performance at the school level back to the leadership preparation of the principals in those schools have the potential to further transform what we already know about the linkages between leadership preparation and student learning.

The key takeaway from our reading of the 10 dossiers that we reviewed was that exemplary partnerships between universities and school districts are defined not as much by their level of financial support (although money certainly does matter), as by their level of institutional commitment to a shared goal, which is then clearly manifested in the programs they construct. In this regard, UTSA and UIC were clearly exemplary.

Curriculum Design

A leadership program’s curriculum design can make strong contributions to a program’s coherence and the quality of learning experiences for program candidates (Orr & Pounder, 2011). Design considerations include factors such as the alignment of curriculum and learning experiences with the program’s mission and foundational standards, the scope and sequence of the curriculum (including both vertical and horizontal alignment of coursework), and the integration of academic and clinical learning experiences.

Like many leadership preparation programs, UTSA’s USLC program is grounded in the Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium standards (ISLLC). In addition, its curriculum design reflects its central mission and thus the curriculum includes specific attention to equity, excellence, social justice, democracy, risk-taking, and responsiveness to community needs (Merchant & Garza, 2015). The program design has an exceptionally strong emphasis on collaboration between university and district personnel in applicant nomination and selection, program planning, teaching, and evaluation processes. Although the program employs a cohort model, it does not have as much emphasis on curriculum sequence and structure as does the UIC program. Instead, there is consistency and coherence in the program’s emphasis on students’ intrapersonal and dispositional development across both coursework and clinical experiences. A high priority is placed on the program’s social justice advocacy philosophy with priority given to developing attitudes and mind-sets first and foremost, and skills secondarily. Attention to both basic and applied knowledge is embedded in the academic coursework, most of which contains some applied field-based activity as well as more traditional readings and knowledge development work.

The partnership dynamics of the program may be UTSA’s most compelling design feature, as an authentic partnership has been sustained over a decade or more without an imbalance of responsibility or power evolving over time. This balance reflects design elements that establish clear zones of authority and responsibility for the respective partners, as well as engaging the partnership personnel in mutually beneficial and reinforcing activities, such as the program teaching and student evaluation activities. Often partnerships that span organizational boundaries break down over time when the transaction costs for one or more of the partners exceed the organizational benefits of the partnership (Tadelis & Williamson, 2013). However, this is clearly not the case with the UTSA leadership program.

The UIC program illustrates how even very carefully designed programs may go through continuous improvement to refine program features and the relationship between and among program elements (Cosner & Tozer, 2014). UIC’s program also provides strong evidence of careful attention to multiple design priorities. First, the curriculum is anchored to an integrated set of relevant professional leadership standards, including the ISLLC, CPS standards for leaders, and the National Board Standards for Accomplished Principals (NBPTS). These anchoring standards reflect the program’s consistency with national standards while focusing on local needs and priorities. Furthermore, the program’s curriculum sequence, both its vertical and horizontal alignment, reinforces the program’s logic model. Specifically, a focus on instructional diagnosis and development, organizational and leadership diagnosis and development, and cycles of inquiry for school improvement are reinforced continuously across the curriculum. Similarly, a focus on social justice in an urban schools context is also continuously reinforced across the program’s curriculum and learning activities. This kind of attention to curriculum sequencing and alignment contributes strongly to the program’s coherence and learning outcomes.

Another impressive program design factor is the careful attention to the learner’s development in both academic knowledge and clinical skills. By tightly integrating intense clinical experiences (i.e., a year-long residency period) with concurrent academic coursework, mutual reinforcement of knowledge and skills are enhanced. Course projects and activities allow the learner to scaffold basic and applied learning onto one another.

Last, the UIC program has a strong developmental logic to its three-stage experience, moving the learner from one stage of development to the next. The sequencing and coordination of these academic and applied learning experiences reflect both the developmental logic of the program and the tandem importance of professional knowledge and professional skills. Both the UIC and the UTSA programs reflect design elements that create strong coherence to promote achievement of their respective missions.

Teaching and Learning Processes

Teaching and learning processes of a program are integrally linked to the program’s mission and goals. UTSA’s USLC employs a constructivist philosophy in its teaching and learning processes (Merchant & Garza, 2015). As was mentioned earlier, a strong premium is placed on students’ intrapersonal development with respect to social justice advocacy. Teaching and learning processes reflect this priority by including critical self-reflection activities in most coursework, as well as development of a continuous auto-ethnography project across the continuum of the program. Students further develop a video documentary to capture their transformational journal as social justice advocates and leaders. Other program requirements include a community project in which students identify a family that is willing to participate in a micro-ethnography and also host a parent–community meeting in their home. Students develop a relationship with the identified family and document a community meeting in which a shared school problem is addressed. The community project includes critical analysis of the parent–community issue and process. Due to the constructivist pedagogy employed in the program, much of the evaluation of students’ work is self-evaluation and reflection with the goal of formative growth and development over time.

In the case of the UIC program, the program’s mission to prepare highly effective school leaders to substantially increase student learning in high-poverty urban schools drives the teaching and learning processes and activities of the program. The focus on instruction, organizational leadership, and data-driven inquiry in urban school settings reflect the program’s mission priorities. UIC’s program demonstrates the faculty’s willingness to develop creative teaching and learning activities that integrate academic knowledge and clinical skills to achieve the program’s goals. For example, the first stage of the program is strongly focused on academic coursework closely linked to intensive and authentic clinical experiences. Teaching and learning activities are designed to integrate and mutually reinforce these two types of learning. In the second stage of the program, a traditional comprehensive exam has been replaced by a series of performance assessments that again reinforce the interdependent nature of basic knowledge and applied skills. The final stage of the program focuses more on applied research skills and post-residency leadership coaching, resulting in a capstone inquiry and data-based thesis that is more highly relevant to the preparation of highly skilled leadership practitioners than traditional doctoral dissertation work. These teaching and learning expectations reflect the integrative nature of the program’s summative assessments.

In addition, the program has developed two valuable signature pedagogies—one in the clinical portion of the program and the other in the academic portion of the program. The clinical signature pedagogy is the “triad meeting” in which the resident principal, the district’s mentor principal, and the university’s leadership coach come together to focus on the resident’s developing clinical skills and leadership practices (Cosner & Tozer, 2014). The academic signature pedagogy entails inquiry projects that are conducted across the program’s coursework. These inquiry projects are focused on achieving school improvement by managing, analyzing, reflecting upon, and utilizing school data to resolve problems and improve student and school outcomes. Again, these signature pedagogies were developed to achieve the program’s mission to prepare effective school improvement leaders for low-performing urban schools.

These two programs have very different approaches to the predominant teaching and learning processes. Whereas the UTSA program has more emphasis on dispositional leadership development to achieve socially just school environments, the UIC program has much more emphasis on leadership development activities to achieve measureable student learning and school outcomes. Nonetheless, it is easy to see how these teaching and learning processes are a direct reflection of the respective program mission and goals and thus create coherent and effective learning experiences for the program enrollees.

Clinical Experiences

A well-supervised, intensive clinical field experience, otherwise known as an internship or residency, has long been recognized as a critical, if not the critical component of an exemplary preparation in school leadership (Orr & Pounder, 2011). Among the central points that emerge from research on clinical experiences are the need to understand the context of the work, which requires sustained immersion in a clinical position; an opportunity to observe and shadow an effective school leader and then be provided authentic work experiences; the time to reflect with a mentor on the consequences of actions taken; and authentic forms of assessment in terms of feedback from both field- and university-based supervisors (Jacobson & Battaglia, 2001; Jacobson & Cypres, 2012; Milstein, 1990).

UTSA’s internship experience is structured so that most of the program’s preparation courses have an embedded clinical component. This collection of clinical experiences is followed by a one-semester internship that serves as the program’s capstone course. Unlike the residency at UIC (described below), there is no available funding through either the program or the district to relieve candidates of their teaching responsibilities. Instead, there is a commitment on the part of the district to provide students flextime as needed to attend and/or observe activities, or to engage in required course assignments. Specifically, the UTSA clinical experience provides aspiring leaders with firsthand experiences with the seven major functions of the principal to which the program ascribes: a campus improvement plan, the campus budget, staffing, professional development, facilities maintenance and operations, food services, and special programs.

By contrast, UIC’s program provides its candidates with a fully paid, year-long principal residency in either an elementary or secondary school that is funded by the CPS. In many ways, this is arguably the most exemplary aspect of the UIC program. Moreover, this clinical experience is supplemented with supervision by a mentor principal and support from an UIC leadership coach through the use of “triad meetings” conducted throughout the residency year that provide ongoing formative feedback regarding competency development. In both programs, these clinical experiences are made possible only as a result of the extraordinary partnerships that have been forged between the universities and their respective school districts.

Overall Program Effectiveness

To be called an exemplary program, measurable evidence needs to be presented that supports a program’s claim that it has successfully addressed its stated goals. In the case of UTSA, the overarching goal from the inception of the program has been to help the SAISD build leadership capacity by “tapping” its potential leaders and “growing their own” principals. To that end, more than half (55%) of the graduates from the program’s first five cohorts are already in leadership positions in the SAISD, including 7 principals and 16 vice principals. Moreover, the UTSA dossier is replete with student testimonials about the quality of their preparation relative to the demands of the jobs they have undertaken. But perhaps even more impressive within these student accounts and reflections is the personal sense of agency the program has instilled with regard to social justice. These new leaders have a sense of purpose that exceeds the daunting task of improving student performance; they now see themselves as the agents of change responsible for improving their whole community and thus we found a clear validation of the USLC social justice mission.

UIC has also tracked the job eligibility and placement rates of their graduates, reporting that 90% pass the CPS principal eligibility process in their first attempt and that 70% have become principals within 5 years of completing their residency—there are currently 76 program alums leading schools. To the tracking of eligibility and job placement, UIC has added an incredibly in-depth analysis of the impact the principals they have prepared have on the schools they lead, including measures of school culture and climate, average daily attendance, the percent of ninth-grade students on track to graduate, as well as measures of growth in student achievement over time in comparison with Illinois state norms, CPS system norms, and student sub-group norms. Among their findings, UIC reports that students in low-income elementary schools led by their graduates are twice as likely to outperform comparable CPS schools by an additional .4 of growth over expected gains, and secondary schools led by their graduates outperform CPS on average gains in percentage of ninth graders on track, average daily attendance, graduation rates, and drop-out reduction. Clearly the data suggest they are doing some things right.

In their article, Cosner and Tozer (2014) explain in greater detail the development and evolution of this school-level performance tracking system, but suffice it to say that this is a cutting edge approach to program assessment that helps both the program and the district identify instructional problems that can be remedied. Moreover, it is an exemplary approach to assess the overall effectiveness of a leadership preparation program that ought to be considered by other programs and/or by state agencies monitoring preparation program effectiveness.

Conclusion

Our review of the 10 programs that applied for the UCEA award and especially those we have designated “exemplary” warrant several recommendations for the betterment of all leadership preparation programs. First and foremost, programs need to articulate an explicit mission that lays the groundwork for and then permeates all aspects of the program, creating program coherence, such as social justice advocacy in the case of UTSA or the transformation of low-performing urban schools at UIC. In a “best case” scenario, this mission enables the development of a strong university–school district partnership or multiple partnerships in which both parties are willing to make critical investments of time, money, and human resources to advance their common objectives.

These commitments include expending considerable energy on candidate recruitment and selection to identify aspiring leaders committed to the program mission. It also means assuring a critical mass of faculty for the program, both at the university and in the field, as well as administrative support needed. Having strong partnerships based on a shared mission can also enable (a) the development of a curriculum and learning experiences that are well-aligned to the desired program and district outcomes, (b) opportunities for field experiences and clinical internships that are intensive and authentic, including time for reflection with and feedback from both field and university-based supervisors, and (c) districts having the chance to audition talented individuals in their work context to fast-track the best into leadership positions. Finally, programs that wish to become exemplary must continuously collect measurable evidence to support claims that they are successfully addressing their stated goals. This becomes especially important when there are strong university–school district partnerships in which measures of the program and district success are essentially one and the same.

It was our pleasure to study the UTSA and UIC programs as well as the other leadership programs that were nominated for UCEA’s first EELP. Reviewing the components of these programs renewed our faith that with faculty and school district commitments, exemplary leadership preparation can be provided under very diverse circumstances. We certainly do not have all the answers, but we can learn from these success stories and can replicate those components that fit with the contexts and cultures of other universities. We hope that the descriptions of the programs provided in this issue will be instructive to those who are interested in strengthening leadership preparation at their respective institutions. It is our expectation and sincere desire that the EELP in coming years will have a significant impact on many educational leadership preparation programs beyond the award recipients.