Educator Services Career Advancement
Commonwealth School Leadership Project

The Need

Imagine educational leaders in every school and district in the Commonwealth with the knowledge, skills and support they need to help teachers educate all students to high standards. This is the Commonwealth School Leadership Project's aim. Through a bold and comprehensive approach the project will redefine school leadership and build structures and introduce policy to expand the supply of qualified and visionary school leaders needed for the 21st century.

The Need. School leadership is facing unprecedented challenges. Today the education system must meet new standards for quality demanded by our increasingly technological and diverse society. Like business and industry, the education field is discovering that the old ways don't work and innovation is needed. Qualified education leaders are needed to inspire such innovation. However, at this time education is facing a shortage of qualified candidates for superintendents and principals at all levels in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Increased accountability and liability, noncompetitive pay, inadequate preparation and ability to keep pace with changes, time required, retirement systems that limit portability of benefits, limited succession planning and recruitment, and lack of support and respect are some of the reasons for the shortages. Action is needed to change the jobs of educational leaders to become more manageable and to enact policies that ensure a qualified leader in every position in districts in the Commonwealth, especially in those districts with a high concentration of low-achieving students.

Increases in state and national standards and the accountability that comes with them and calls for more parent and public input have created a completely new context in which education leaders work. Superintendents now need to embrace new constituents, work as a leader in their community across the various departments in their cities and towns, build a shared vision for education and youth development, and educate parents and the public about the new reality of education. Principals at all levels are being asked to demonstrate their success by increasing student outcomes. Those that succeed often do so by maintaining a long-term focus on instructional and curricular improvements and creating coherence and reducing fragmentation for students and teachers.

Expectations for education leaders have changed dramatically since the 1993 Education Reform Act. Leaders must attend more to accountability and assessment, testing, school improvement planning and work with school councils, personnel issues, and professional development and re-certification of teachers. They need new knowledge and skills such as:

• knowledge of research on learning and literacy;
• effective professional development;
• community organizing and consensus building;
• student achievement data analysis and use;
• instruction and implementations of standards;
• time management and organization; and
• recruiting, developing, and retaining staff.

In the new educational context school board members, too, need to use effective leadership and work collaboratively within their communities to bring about high outcomes for all students. Effective leaders will forge new partnerships with the local school board members and work diligently to reach their shared goals for student learning.

The Commonwealth School Leadership Project is guided by a Steering Committee. Member organizations of this Steering Committee include:

Massachusetts Association of School Committees: www.masc.org
Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents: www.massupt.org
Massachusetts Elementary School Principals Association: www.mespa.org
Massachusetts Federation of Teachers: www.mfteducator.org
Massachusetts Associations of Secondary School Administrators: www.mssaa.org
Massachusetts Teachers Association: www.massteacher.org