Reporter's Notebook

New York

School leaders appear increasingly willing to assess the state of their profession and how they might change it and attract a stronger pool of candidates.

At the recent Leaders Count conference here, the first held by the Wallace-Readers' Digest Funds, much discussion focused on how to bridge the gap between what superintendents and principals have commonly done in their jobs and how those jobs are evolving. The New York City-based philanthropy has begun to direct some of its giving toward better defining the role of school administrators and determining ways to find the best people for the jobs.

Richard F. Elmore, a professor at Harvard University's graduate school of education, told a ballroom of hundreds of attendees that school leaders must work to spread achievements from individual schools and classes to entire districts,...