Imagine a universe without standards — faulty wiring, broken pipes, no accountability, low expectations for quality, teachers who can't teach, principals who can't lead. Now imagine what knowledge you would like an effective principal to have. Imagine what beliefs you would like an effective principal to hold. Imagine how you would like an effective principal to perform. Imagine if principals were cheerleaders for teachers and believed that teaching and learning are the driving forces behind anything called school! We believe that school leaders who do not have a focus on teaching and learning are ultimately ineffective, and have little or no credibility among the teachers whom they are trying to lead.

Based on this strong proposition of teaching and learning above all else, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) was formed to develop standards and assessments for school leaders.

The members of ISLLC are convinced that standards for school leaders provide an especially powerful leverage point for reform particularly when coupled with assessment. Students and teachers have long been tested, but until recently, school administrators, who play such a critical role in effective functioning of their schools, have not been required to meet the same types of testing requirements. Standards allow a variety of stakeholders to drive improvement efforts over several fronts: licensure, certification, induction, candidate assessment, evaluation, professional development, and preparation program approval.

For two years, ISLLC worked in small and large groups. Through focus groups and a 50-state survey, they gathered input from stakeholders throughout the country to develop six standards for school leaders. These standards are defined by nearly two hundred indicators of knowledge, performance, and dispositions.

Standards alone are not particularly powerful. By linking the Standards for School Leaders to other efforts that inform change, however, they will have a major impact on reform. The most visible and powerful use of the standards to date has been in development and implementation of assessment tools for licensure of beginning principals and superintendents and relicensure of practicing school leaders. The School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA), a test for the initial licensing of beginning principals, was completed in 1998 and is now being administered nationally three times a year.

This innovative performance assessment is extremely rigorous. Candidates must spend six full hours evaluating case study essay questions, responding to vignettes involving issues a school administrator typically encounters, and analyzing documents that often cross an administrator's desk.

Nearly ten states are presently requiring aspiring principals to pass this test and about a dozen others are in the process of studying the strengths of adoption. Candidates who do not pass the SLLA will not be granted a license to be a principal in the state in which they took the test.

Next came the development of a portfolio to be used primarily for relicensure of current administrators. This portfolio is now ready for use and is undergoing extensive field studies in five states. In creating the portfolio, administrators gather materials from their work, describe how they used the materials, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their actions. Finally, the School Superintendents Licensure Assessment (SSA), a test for the initial licensing of superintendents, was administered for the first time in October 2000. Again, the assessment includes only open-ended performance items that challenge the potential administrator to analyze authentic school situations. Failure to pass this test will also prevent a candidate from being licensed as a superintendent in the state in which he or she takes the test.

The ISLLC members next requested that efforts be made to link the ISLLC Standards with professional development for school leaders. As a result, the Collaborative Professional Development Process for School Leaders (CPDP) was developed. The CPDP is performance-based and addresses critical needs of the school or district while simultaneously enhancing professional growth of the school leader.

The ISLLC members believe that these strategies can directly impact the quality of leadership in U.S. schools. We have been fortunate that others agree and have helped us to be successful in implementing these initiatives in many states. For the first time, all of the key players involved in strengthening leadership in schools — the school leader associations, state departments of education, professional standards boards, and universities — have a common set of standards from which to work. And now they also have high-stakes assessment instruments to give these standards teeth. We believe that the ISLLC Standards will continue to play an even greater role in reshaping educational leadership for the 21st century.

View the ISLLC Standards. Read more about Dr. Shipman and superintendents' leadership skills in Education Week.

REFERENCES

Council of Chief State School Officers (1996). Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards for School Leaders. Washington, DC: Author.

Shipman, N. & Murphy, J. (1999, Spring). ISLLC Update. UCEA Review, XL, 13, 18.

As a former professor in the Department of Leadership at the University of Memphis, Dr. Shipman used his 25 years experience as a public school principal, supervisor, director of instruction, and other administrative roles to help his students link theory to practice. Now, as an independent educational leadership consultant, working with state departments of education, universities, and school systems throughout the United States, Dr. Shipman still likes to think of himself as, first and foremost, a practitioner and child advocate. Dr. Shipman can be reached via email at Nship711@aol.com

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