School & District Management

National Principal-Certification Project to Fold

By Lesli A. Maxwell — April 22, 2014 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards last week voted to scrap its nearly five-year-long, $3.5 million effort to create an advanced certification for principals.

In a unanimous decision, the board of directors for the National Board agreed that financial and administrative challenges had become too great to continue with the program, said Ronald Thorpe, the president and chief executive officer of the Arlington, Va.-based organization. Also, too few principals had persisted through the field- and pilot-testing phases to generate a large enough sample to ensure that the scoring of participants would be valid and reliable, Mr. Thorpe said.

“I deeply regret that this hasn’t ended up where we hoped it would end up,” Mr. Thorpe said.

The decision to terminate the program—which had set out to mirror the board’s 25-year-old certification process for teachers—means that the more than 200 principals who participated in the program’s field- and pilot-testing phases will not receive advanced certification.

Instead, those school leaders who completed rigorous portfolios of work over 18 months will receive “written feedback on their submissions,” Mr. Thorpe said. That feedback will be mailed to the principals no later than July 28, he said.

“No one is going to get a score, because there is no valid score,” Mr. Thorpe said. “It will be narrative and personalized to them. Participants will also receive more scripted feedback on how they measured up to each of the specific principal standards that were developed as part of the program, he said.

‘Insult to the Profession’

Jack Davern, an elementary school principal in North Carolina who completed the pilot program, is stunned.

“This is a huge letdown,” Mr. Davern said. “We did not get what we were promised.”

JoAnn D. Bartoletti, the executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, or NASSP, said the National Board’s decision is a major blow to a years-long push to develop national certification for the principal profession.

“Countless professional hours on our part and several million dollars were spent on this, and now it amounts to practically nothing,” Ms. Bartoletti said.

“More importantly, the National Board has broken faith with a group of committed professionals who rallied their communities to engage in this rigorous professional development,” she said. “For all their efforts, they are left embarrassed and empty-handed.”

Mr. Thorpe said the National Board would send official letters to district superintendents on behalf of the participating principals and would send press releases to local news organizations to tout principals’ participation in the pilot.

Those gestures, Mr. Davern said, fall woefully short of what he signed on for when he agreed to participate in the pilot rather than begin a doctoral program.

“Those of us who chose to do this did so with a high level of commitment and sacrifice,” he said. “This is an insult to the profession.”

Costs Too High

In weighing whether to recommend that the program continue, Mr. Thorpe said the board considered a number of factors. The professional standards for principals that grew out of the effort, he said, are respected broadly. But the high attrition rates in both the field- and plot-test phases—some 80 percent of the school leaders who had started the program dropped out—signaled that an 18-month-long process that was entirely portfolio-based might be too much for already overburdened principals.

Unlike the certification process for teachers, which involves some portfolio work and an assessment, the principals’ process was only portfolio-based, which requires much more time and labor to score, Mr. Thorpe said.

That, he said, created another big challenge: finding sitting principals who could or would take the time to be trained on how to score the portfolios and then do the scoring. “We saw huge attrition rates there as well,” he said. And the costs for scoring were going to be prohibitive.

“We think full scoring for principals would be three times longer than for the teacher certification at a per-person cost of $6,000 to $7,000,” Mr. Thorpe said. That’s compared to scoring costs for teachers of about $2,500 per candidate, he said.

“The National Board vastly underestimated the costs for doing this,” he said.

But Mr. Thorpe said the standards created for the principal profession are strong and that the board would work with other organizations—most likely the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the NASSP—to carry on with the development of a full certification program.

That pledge does little to remove the sting of disappointment for principals in the pilot like Mr. Davern.

Similar to the teachers’ certification process, the principals had to reflect on their leadership practices and write about them; conduct surveys and focus groups in their school communities and prepare demographic profiles; and submit videos that introduced their schools and showed them leading a meeting of their school-leadership team.

“The process was powerful professional development for me,” Mr. Davern said. “But it seems like the National Board just gave up on this.”

Ms. Bartoletti said that the NASSP, along with the NAESP, would not allow the standards to disappear, though it’s not yet clear how the two associations would move forward with establishing a certification program.

“The standards still have legs and we stand by them,” she said. “And we still stand by the need for advanced certification for principals.”

A version of this article appeared in the April 23, 2014 edition of Education Week as National Board Ends Principal-Certification Program

Events

Student Well-Being K-12 Essentials Forum Boosting Student and Staff Mental Health: What Schools Can Do
Join this free virtual event based on recent reporting on student and staff mental health challenges and how schools have responded.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Curriculum Webinar
Practical Methods for Integrating Computer Science into Core Curriculum
Dive into insights on integrating computer science into core curricula with expert tips and practical strategies to empower students at every grade level.
Content provided by Learning.com

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management The Missed Opportunity for Public Schools and Climate Change
More cities are creating climate action plans, but schools are often left out of the equation.
4 min read
Global warming illustration, environment pollution, global warming heating impact concept. Change climate concept.
Collage by Gina Tomko/Education Week and iStock/Getty Images Plus
School & District Management 13 States Bar School Board Members From Getting Paid. Here's Where It's Allowed (Map)
There are more calls to increase school board members' pay, or to allow them to be paid at all.
Two professional adults, with a money symbol.
sankai/iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion Bad Sleep Is a Problem for Principals. Here’s What to Do About It
Our new study highlights the connection between stress and sleep among school leaders, write three researchers.
Eleanor Su-Keene, David E. DeMatthews & Alex Keene
5 min read
Stylized illustration of an alarm clock over a background which is split in half, with one half being nighttime and one half being daytime.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management 5 Mistakes Schools Make When Building SEL Programs
Experts weigh in on how to avoid parental and community backlash against social-emotional learning initiatives.
5 min read
Woman finding her way to a happy smile icon in the middle of labyrinth like maze with school subject icons ghosted over a cloudy sky textured background.
iStock/Getty Images Plus