Preparing educational leaders to close achievement gaps

For more than 25 years, researchers have described the critical roles leaders play in creating effective schools and school districts. If U.S. schools are to close achievement gaps, their leaders must possess the appropriate knowledge, dispositions, and skills to assume these critical roles. The Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards inform the preparation and continued professional development of school administrators. These standards address six broad areas influencing student learning, including vision, culture, management, community relationships, ethics, and the larger political, economic, legal, and cultural context. The attributes of leaders in schools that have closed achievement gaps fit within these six comprehensive standards; however, critical nuances could easily be lost in the broad categories. In a manner that adds depth and specificity to the ISLLC standards, the authors of this article describe the specific knowledge, dispositions, and performances demonstrated by leaders in schools and districts that have closed achievement gaps.

**********

WHENEVER STORIES ARE TOLD of schools that have closed achievement gaps, discussions focus on the role of school leaders. For more than 25 years, educational researchers have emphasized the role that school leaders play in creating schools and school districts where diverse populations of students achieve high levels of academic success. Edmonds (1979) and Brookover and Lezotte (1979) examined effective schools and emphasized the importance of instructional leaders. More recently, Reyes, Scribner, and Scribner (1999); Skrla, Scheurich, and Johnson (2000); and Cawelti and Protheroe (2001) described the central role leaders played in creating schools and school districts that closed achievement gaps.

More than ever before, we need intelligent, talented women and men who can lead schools in creating academic environments within which an increasingly diverse student body achieves challenging standards of educational excellence. State and federal accountability reforms do not diminish the need for effective educational leaders. In fact, today's accountability systems underscore the need by challenging leaders to improve student achievement for increasingly diverse groups of students. New accountability systems demand results measured by statewide assessments, graduation rates, dropout rates, attendance rates, end-of-course exams, and other indicators of achievement. In particular, accountability systems required by the No Child Left Behind legislation demand that schools and districts improve the achievement of various demographic groups of students (by race-ethnicity, income status, language background, disability status) such that gaps in achievement narrow and ultimately disappear. Schools that may have at one time been labeled effective or excellent, according to state accountability systems that only considered aggregate achievement results, may struggle to earn mediocre ratings in systems that focus on the disaggregated achievement results of various student groups.

How might studies of high-performing schools and school districts inform our efforts to develop educational leaders? What do we know about the leaders of effective schools and school districts that might influence the preparation of new educational leaders to achieve similar or better results? What are the implications for administration preparation programs and professional development systems? The Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) developed a set of standards to inform the preparation and continued professional development of school administrators (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 1996). These standards, first published in 1996, aim to enhance the quality of educational leadership, transitioning educational administrators from institutional managers to instructional leaders (Murphy, 2002). The standards address six broad areas of knowledge, dispositions, and performances, including the following:

1. The vision of learning.

2. The culture of teaching and learning.

3. The management of learning.

4. Relationships with the broader community to foster learning.

5. Integrity, fairness, and ethics in learning.

6. The political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context of learning.

The knowledge, dispositions, and performances applied by leaders in schools and districts that have closed achievement gaps fit within these six comprehensive standards; however, critical nuances could easily be lost in the broad categories. The following discussion highlights the specific knowledge, dispositions, and performances consistently demonstrated by leaders in schools and districts that have closed achievement gaps.

Standard 1: The Vision of Learning

   A school administrator is an educational leader who
   promotes the success of all students by facilitating
   the development, articulation, implementation, and
   stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and
   supported by the school community. (CCSSO, 1996)