State-Mandated Educational Leadership Program Redesign: A View From North Carolina

• In Event: Roundtable Session 85
  In Roundtable Session: Promoting Active Agency in Educational Leadership-Preparation Policy Making: Furthering Discussion in the Professoriate

Abstract

(While this session will use papers produced in the five case studies as a discussion starting point, this interactive symposium is intended to stimulate further discussion about others’ experiences with program redesign. A summary of the context of each case study is provided in this proposal, and full papers will be distributed at the session.)

In December 2006, the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE) adopted new educational leadership standards that were closely aligned with the national ISLLC and ELCC standards. In August 2007, the North Carolina legislature signed into law HB 536 requiring the SBE to develop new standards for school administrator preparation programs. The SBE followed up by releasing in May 2008 standards for a new principal evaluation process and adopting in October 2008 new guidelines for school leader preparation entitled the “North Carolina School Executive Evaluation Rubric for Preservice Candidates.” In further response to the 2007 state legislation, the SBE issued in fall 2008 a mandate to all 17 state-certified university-based educational leadership programs to “re-vision” their programs to ensure alignment with the new state standards and to comply with other tenets of the 2007 legislation. This case study describes how educational leadership faculty at one North Carolina public university responded in 2008-2009 to the state mandate by collecting program effectiveness data and redesigning the program curriculum. These efforts included 1) soliciting perspectives from 32 sitting superintendents in the program’s service delivery area, 2) convening a cross-functional work (advisory) team, 3) conducting a series of faculty work sessions, 4) convening a faculty subgroup to develop state-required re-visioning documents, and 5) surveying program alumni by serving as a pilot site for the new School Leadership Preparation and Practice Survey (SLPPS) developed by UCEA/LTEL-SIG Taskforce (University Council for Educational Administration/ Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership Special Interest Group) on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs.

Author

• Joy C. Phillips, East Carolina University