Dive Brief:
- New national standards for principal preparation were released by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration in 2015, and universities in Missouri, Delaware and Nebraska are among those redesigning their programs to align with them.
- Education Week reports aspiring principals in the Northwest Missouri State University’s program will now spend more time learning strategies for leading equitable schools, nurturing relationships with parents, and becoming instructional leaders in their future schools.
- Delaware was one of the first states to adopt the new standards and state education leaders will meet with university officials to make sure performance evaluation benchmarks align with them, and in Nebraska local standards have received an additional focus on continuous self-learning and higher accountability for student learning, thanks to the new standards.
Dive Insight:
Principals are often pulled between two roles that compete for their attention — one, as an instructional leader and the other as a good operations manager. The new national standards for principal preparation emphasize the principal role in student learning to a far greater degree than previous standards did.
Beyond pre-service opportunities to ensure strong leadership preparation, some districts are developing in-house leadership academies to address the need. The Syracuse Aspiring Leaders Academy helps create consistent norms for leadership across the Syracuse City School District in New York and has increased the quality of applicants for open positions at the school and district level.
