District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

Progress Report on Drafting New Standards for Principals, Superintendents, and Other Leadership Roles

At our meeting in October 2008, I updated the Board on the Department's work in educator leadership development. (Please see the attached memo dated October 21, 2008, or view it at: http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/1008/item6.html.) As noted in the October memo, we have found wide agreement among Massachusetts public school administrators and their associations, as well as among representatives of the higher education community, that our current professional standards for administrators are outdated and far too general to serve as an effective basis for the preparation, licensing, and ongoing development of school and district administrators.

This memorandum is an update on our progress since October in developing the leadership policy standards and building a cohesive educational leadership system. Key activities have included:

• November 2008 -A national panel of experts met with about 20 administrators and staff from our Massachusetts Cohesive Leadership System (MCLS) team sites to share their experiences with instituting new leadership standards. The panel emphasized the challenges and opportunities entailed in using such standards to create a more cohesive leadership system - specifically, getting the standards from policy into program redesign and ensuring that they are levers for changing practice. The panel identified specific roles for various constituencies in that process.

  Also in November 2008, the Wallace Foundation sponsored a national forum in Boston for over 75 Wallace-funded researchers and state and district leaders to learn about work underway on using formative assessments to strengthen leaders' performance. A national town hall meeting conducted by the New York Times, which some Board members attended, included a panel discussion with Massachusetts education leaders to explore the question, "What Kind of Leaders Do Our Schools Deserve?"

• December 2008 -A team from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), consisting of individuals who have been working with the Wallace Network states on the development of cohesive leadership systems, provided written and verbal feedback to the Department and our district partners, Springfield and Boston, on the draft standards and performance indicators.

• Ongoing -The district-based programs in Springfield and Boston continue to work with the analytical process they developed as part of the Massachusetts Cohesive Leadership System for redesigning their principal preparation programs to ensure that candidates will be prepared to meet the new standards when they are adopted.

• April 2009 -Dr. Joe Simpson facilitated a full-day workshop with Massachusetts stakeholders and representatives from eight preparation programs, most of whom have agreed to pilot the analytical redesign review using the new standards next year (formerly called a gap analysis). Participants worked through a series of activities as a whole and in small groups to come to consensus on a definition of effective education leadership and the dispositions required of candidates for the role.

• April 2009 -David Haselkorn joined the Department as the new Associate Commissioner to lead the Center for Educator Policy, Preparation, Licensure, and Leadership Development.

• May 2009 - The Department submitted a new scope of work to the Wallace Foundation for their final cycle of funding. The scope emphasizes scale and sustainability activities for implementing the new standards and performance indicators once they have been approved by the Board. The grant would be for $2 million to support ongoing work of the Department and its partner districts of Springfield and Boston.

In June, I will present new standards for educational leaders for the Board's approval in the form of proposed amendments to the licensure regulations. Consistent with the performance-based Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards (ISLLC: 2008), they will identify broad policy standards and program and practice standards in the form of performance indicators differentiated by position and career stage. The broad policy standards, (which were shared with the Board in draft form last October) are staked to the four key areas that research has identified as critical in the preparation and ongoing development of strong educational leaders: (1) leadership for learning and instruction; (2) organizational management and operations; (3) community partnerships; and (4) reflective leadership.

These broad policy standards inform the development of the draft performance indicators that we will bring to you in June. Taken together, they will address what beginning principals should know and be able to do, as well as the core dispositions such educational leaders should possess. Work is also underway on performance indicators for experienced principals and beginning and experienced superintendents.

Our initiative to build a cohesive standards-based, results-oriented system for leadership development has included significant engagement with the field here in Massachusetts, with state and national researchers, and with other state partners in the Wallace network. The new policy standards and performance indicators, when adopted, will help to guide the identification, recruitment, preparation, mentoring, and assessment of a new generation of education leaders who will lead the way to increased academic achievement for all our students.

Attachment:

October 21, 2008 memo