1.1 Cohort doctoral preparation programs: neo-institutional  (Page 8/16)

In the case of cohort use, only one condition of the coercive mechanism appears to apply. This condition is the general belief among educational leadership faculty that failure to reform preparation programs may result in actions by members of the professional field to weaken higher education’s role as the major provider of these programs. Over the past few years national attention on public education in general, and school leaders in particular, has helped form a trenchant perception of university preparation programs. Newspaper accounts such as those in Education Week, and the more widely read New York Times and USA Today, have covered broad leadership issues but have also focused on leadership preparation. For the most part these articles have been highly critical of traditional university preparation programs and represent, in large measure, current popular opinion of university-based educational leadership preparation (Guthrie&Sanders, 2001; Young&Petersen, 2002; Petersen, 1999). More recently, Levine’s call for discontinuance of EdD programs in favor of master’s programs similar to the M.B.A. highlights anew the range of threats that have surfaced to stimulate a variety of reforms, including calls for redefining the traditional EdD (Shulman, et al., 2005).This unyielding scrutiny has leadership preparation programs in a precarious position. Decreased institutional support, stronger state licensure mandates, federal and government sponsored initiatives designed to prepare school leaders outside of the university setting, coupled with alternative licensure for school administrators are evidence of external groups’dissatisfaction with the performance of university programs in preparing educational leaders:

Over the past few years, the national attention focused on educational leadership has escalated. Dewitt-Wallace Readers Digest Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Annenberg Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Governors Association, Educational Officials, and the leaders of several national corporations, among others, have all expressed interest in the training and preparation of school leaders. Their focus on this issue has brought with it millions of dollars in research and program funding…For the most part, [they are] critical of traditional university preparation of school and school system leaders and/or supportive of alternative preparation programs. (Young&Petersen, 2002, p.1).

Other than these generalized threats about creating alternatives to university leadership preparation programs, we are unaware of any external agent within the organizational field (state departments, accreditation associations, professional associations, practitioners, etc.) that is requiring, either by virtue of authority or threat of sanctions, the use of cohort structures to deliver leadership preparation programs. Therefore, the condition of anticipated coercion that does obtain in this instance acts not in a specific way but generally. University programs do not anticipate that failure to reform preparation programs will result in the imposition of a cohort structure by external agents or the application of specific sanctions. Rather, faculty appear to share a diffuse understanding that reform is indeed necessary if higher education is to maintain it’s predominate role in leadership preparation. Additional evidence of this diffuse threat are English’s (2006) concerns about the routinization and standardization of preparation programs as a consequence of the application of ELCC and NCATE standards.