School Leader

Hear Stephen Ritz at the 2014 Mary E. Hensley Lecture Series

The WKU College and Educational and Behavioral Sciences will proudly present the 2014 Mary E. Hensley Lecture on September 9, featuring Bronx teacher and administrator Stephen Ritz, founder of the Green Bronx Machine.

What started out as a science project in his classroom became a massive community-based agriculture initiative in which Ritz's students have grown over 30,000 pounds of vegetables feeding over 450 students and their families.  Ritz's efforts have helped student attendance skyrocket and created 2,200 youth jobs. 

Watch Ritz share his story in this TED Talk here.

Stephen Ritz will speak at 7:00 p.m. on September 9 in Van Meter Auditorium on WKU's Main Campus.  The event is free and open to the public.  Educators, parents, and the community are encouraged to attend.

Apply now for Spring 2015 WKU Principal Certification Program

WKU’s Department of Educational Administration, Leadership, & Research is now reviewing applications for admission to the Spring 2015 principal certification program cohort.  Click here for more information about principal certification at WKU, and click here to access an application packet.

For priority consideration, applications should be received by September 15, 2014.  Please email me with questions or to express your intent to apply: gary.houchens@wku.edu.

WKU seeks highly-effective teachers with at least 3 years of successful classroom experience, a Master’s degree, and a 3.0 minimum Master’s-level grade point average for application to our rigorous, cohort-based certification program.

The program requires a minimum of 18 credit hours completed over a three-semester timeframe.  Many candidates can be eligible for Level I certification in as little as 18 months.  Candidates may complete the program for certification only or for Rank I status (requires a minimum of 30 credit hours).  Options are also available for completing principal certification as a component of the Educational Specialist (EdS) degree or Doctor of Educational Leadership (EdD) program (additional admissions requirements apply for both options).

WKU’s principal program is offered in a hybrid format, blending online learning and approximately four face-to-face Saturday classes per semester.  Principal courses heavily emphasize field-based experiences that immerse candidates in leadership opportunities in their own schools and districts.  A mentoring component ensures principal candidates receive on-going feedback and support at the district level as they progress through the program.

All principal candidates who are graduates of WKU’s College of Education and Behavior Sciences or who are employeed in a district belonging to the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative are eligible for the Topper Educator Graduate Scholarship, which could save candidates thousands of dollars during the duration of their program.

WKU strongly supports diversity in school leadership and encourages all minority candidates to apply.

Currently 52 principal candidates in two previous cohorts representing 16 districts are participating in WKU’s newly-revamped certification program.  Candidates admitted for Spring 2015 will join this group of aspiring administrators on an exciting leadership journey.

Again, send me your questions or intent to apply (gary.houchens@wku.ed) and submit your application by September 15, 2014 for priority consideration.

Hiring and Keeping Great School Leaders

I want to commend to all aspiring and practicing school administrators a recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation called Lacking Leaders: The Challenge of Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Placement.  With Fordham's typical emphasis on strong, research-based evidence and thoughtful policy recommendations, Lacking Leaders offers a good diagnosis of why principal selection often fails to bring dramatic school improvement, and provides solid suggestions for how districts can improve the process.  You can read a synopsis of the report here.

The report examines principal hiring practices in five urban districts, but the authors' conslusions are typical of many districts, even in our area of Kentucky.  The report finds that there are few mechansims for actively identifying and recruiting high-quality candidates from outside districts, and that when desirable candidates are found, they are rarely placed with careful thought to how their particular skillset matches the unique needs of the school.  In particular, districts don't pay enough attention to whether principal candidates already have a track record of improving student achievement, even if they have distinguished themselves as a leader in other ways.

Finally, Lacking Leaders concludes that the job of school principal is enormously out of porportion to the duties of the role and recommends that principals be paid higher salaries and be given more autonomy.  Other recommendations include:

• Take a proactive approach to recruitment. Develop criteria to identify promising candidates both inside and outside of the district and actively seek them out. At the same time, identify and prepare internal candidates systematically and early—and eliminate barriers that might discourage high-potential candidates.
• Insist on evidence of a candidate’s prior success in boosting pupil achievement.
• Evaluate candidates against the competencies and skills demonstrated by successful principals.
• Design the placement process to match individual schools’ needs with particular candidates’ strengths.
• Continually evaluate hiring efforts. Collect and analyze all relevant data, and then develop metrics by which to assess each stage of the process, particularly in relation to the school results that follow.

From my own experience working with K12 schools, I concur with the report's conclusions and recommendations.  I would just also include more careful, intentional efforts to identify potential leadership candidates from among current teacher and partnering with universities, cooperatives, and other organizations to nurture these aspiring leaders to increase the current applicant pool.  Many rural districts face similar challenges to urban districts in recruiting candidates from the outside.  I'm pleased to see more "grow your own" efforts being launched by districts.

These initiatives will continue to be limited however, unless districts also bring the kind of attention to placement and emphasize demonstrable gains in student learning on the part of their principal candidates as described in Lacking Leaders.

You can download the full report here.