6/3/03 -- If the nation wants an outstanding public school system, then it's going to have to rethink how it goes about recruiting and training its school leaders.
That's the conclusion of a new policy document, Better Leaders for America's Schools: A Manifesto, by the Broad Foundation and Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
The manifesto, signed by 65 prominent educators, argues that experienced business executives without traditional certification should be allowed to lead schools and districts.
"It is so important that our . . . public schools have the best and the brightest leaders at their helm, regardless of their professional backgrounds or paper credentials," the report states.
The "deregulation" of administrator certification requirements is necessary because today's conventional training and certification programs are not producing the quality of school administrators needed to produce world-class schools, the report states.
At a Washington, D.C., meeting to discuss the report's findings, Emily Feistritzer, president of the National Center for Education Information, was invited to summarize her research on state certification practices.
"Most states do not report a shortage in numbers" of educators certified in school administration, she says. "They report they have a quality problem. They're not able to get the people they'd like to have in those superintendent and principal positions."
The report suggests the current system of training school administrators places too much importance on meeting regulatory requirements, such as credentials and university training -- and not enough on the importance of attracting candidates with leadership skills.
The result, it claims, is a costly, time-consuming training process that discourages many teachers with leadership skills and virtually bars proven leaders from other professions.
"When it comes to school leadership, we conclude that more -- more requirements, more regulations, more courses, more credentials -- is not the same as better," the report states. "Being certified is simply not the same as being qualified to lead a school or school district successfully in an era of results-based accountability."
Instead, the report says, local school officials should be permitted to hire principals and superintendents for their managerial and leadership skills -- and determine for themselves the importance of a candidate's educational background. It also urges states to remove regulatory barriers and make it easier for non-traditional candidates to enter school administration.
While there has been some progress at the state level, not much is happening at the local level, Feistritzer says.
That's slowly changing -- at least in urban centers, says Steven Adamowski of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and former CEO of the Cincinnati school system. Across the nation, a number of urban districts have hired military officers, corporate leaders, and other non-traditional candidates to run their schools.
Among larger organizations, "there is going to be a necessity to rely to a far greater degree on leadership and management skills . . . than on instructional leadership," he says.
Yet, significant regulatory obstacles remain. Adamowski notes that, in Ohio, the CEO of a major international corporation, employing hundreds of thousands of people, is still not considered qualified to run a 600-student elementary school.
Frederick Hess, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, dismissed concerns that non-educators are unqualified to run schools. Serving as a leader of a school -- and especially a school system -- is increasingly about managing people and resources and setting goals and accountability to achieve results, he says. Knowing how to teach is not necessarily the key to successful administration.
"I'm not suggesting any warm body should get a seat" in the principal's office, he says. "I'm just saying open up the system. Schools should have the ability to consider all people."
The report also claims that the nation will get the quality of school administrators it's willing to pay for. Although superintendent salaries are rising, principals' pay needs a boost.
The report recommends that principals be paid at least 150 percent more than teachers and that they should have the possibility of earning an additional 50 percent in performance-related bonuses.