0.5 Machado, c., & Cline, d. (april 2010). faculty perceptions:  (Page 3/6)

The survey instrument was administered to faculty at 379 school leadership preparation programs listed in the 24 th edition of the Educational Administration Directory (NCPEA, 2004). The 222 survey respondents were representative of the population in terms of both affiliation status (public and private) and Carnegie classification status (doctoral extensive, doctoral intensive, and masters’ level programs). However, in terms of accreditation status, the sample was comprised of a greater number of institutions with full NCATE accreditation status than the population; the proportion of programs with probationary/conditional NCATE accreditation for the sample was representative of the population, even though it was slightly smaller.

Findings and discussion

School leadership programs, nationwide, were aligned, either directly or indirectly with the ISLLC or ELCC standards. In the case of the latter, interview participants indicated that their programs were congruent with state standards, which, in turn, were congruent with the ISLLC standards. This study reveals that the program-standards alignment process unfolded gradually over a period of time and took anywhere between six months to several years. One tenth of the respondents claimed that the process began as early as 1996 when the ISLLC standards were launched; approximately three fourths of the respondents indicated that program-standards alignment at their institutions began between 1998 and 2003; for approximately 15 percent the process began in 2004 or later. As many as a fifth of the respondents reported that, to date, their departments had made between three to five attempts to align their programs with the standards. A little over one- third of the respondents reported that review and modification of program-standards alignment is an ongoing process within their departments.

Six of the eight interview participants reported a very high degree of program-standards alignment; the others reported moderately high degree of alignment. The quantitative data revealed a similar trend. More than four-fifths of the survey respondents reported that they felt that there was moderate to substantial observable evidence of program-standards alignment. Interview participants justified their claim of ‘high degree of alignment’ either by the fact that their programs were approved by the state or because they successfully attained and/or retained their NCATE accreditation status.

Table 1 shows that faculty perceived that their programs were better aligned to Standards 7 (internship) and 3 (management of organizational operations and resources), followed by Standard 2, 1, 5, 6, and finally 4. There was a high degree of agreement between faculty perceptions for all standards, especially Standard 1 (developing a shared vision) and, Standard 3 (management of organizational operations and resources). These findings corroborate Cornell’s (2005) and Cox’s (2007) findings that Standard 3 and Standard 5 (acting with integrity, fairness and ethics) were more strongly emphasized as compared to Standards 4 (collaboration with families and communities) and Standards 6 (influencing the politics and cultural context). Given the powerful connection between home and school in promoting academic success (Chall, Jacobs,&Baldwin, 1990; Rowe, 1995) it is crucial that we strive to embed Standards 4 and 6 more effectively into the curriculum.