Leadership Matters August 2014

Illinois wins innovation award for new principal preparation program

championed the voice of the field and piloted new approaches for preparing effective principals." Brad Hutchison, who retired as a school superintendent last year, was one of the IASA representatives on the design team and said he thinks the program will help better prepare candidates to become effective principals. “I have witnessed first-hand the benefits of the redesigned Principal Preparation Program (PPP). The principal candidates in my class are eager to become principals, rather than just acquiring a Type 75 certification for possible use sometime in the future. It is my belief that students who complete the PPP will be ready to successfully serve as an instructional leader of an Illinois school,” said Hutchison, who now serves as the P-12 Program Coordinator at ISU. “As a former superintendent of schools and member of the statewide Principal Redesign Team, it brings me great joy to know that the Illinois work on this important topic has been recognized at the national level.” The Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville has been awarded a two-year $500,000 grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and a two-year $50,000 grant from the Wallace Foundation that allows the IERC to conduct an implementation review study of Illinois’ new policy for redesigning principal preparation programs, gathering both university and pre-K through 12 th grade perspectives. The IERC will collaborate with the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research on this study. For more information about the program visit: Working Together to Prepare Illinois School Leaders .

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University (ISU) were honored by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) at its recent National Forum on Educational Policy in Washington, D.C. Illinois was named winner of the 2014 Frank Newman Award for State Innovations for the collaborative implementation of new school principal preparation and certification standards. The two state agencies and the ISU education policy center partnered with stakeholders throughout the state to redesign the strategy for preparing school principals through upgraded standards and professional development. “In improving our schools, there is little that matters more than the quality of our principals,” said Jeremy Anderson, president of ECS. “Illinois’ work exemplifies what can happen when stakeholders collaborate in such a critical area.” Dr. Erika Hunt, senior policy analyst at the ISU Center, said collaboration was the key to successfully implementing the new program. “The ideas for strengthening principal preparation came directly from the educational professionals throughout the state,” Hunt said. “This work is a result of a grassroots effort based on over five years of planning and input both through formal state task forces and also planning and feedback by the field. The Center facilitated and staffed these meetings, but the success of this work is dependent on so many people and organizations that

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