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Introduction

Schools are under tremendous pressure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Test preparation receives so much emphasis that teachers have had to reduce or eliminate instruction in subjects other than those to be tested. Abrams&Madaus (2003) discovered that “in some states, 80% of the elementary schools spend 20% of their instructional time preparing for end-of-grade tests” (p. 32). (Author) (2009) summarized research by Klein (2005) which found that students “are coached on how to take standardized tests, subjected to pep rallies to get them revved up to do their best on high-stakes tests, treated to breakfast at school on the day of testing, given sugar snacks just before testing, and presented with gift certificates to stores in the local mall when they do well on the state tests” (p. 51-52).

All students are required to make AYP by 2014 in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. Guilfoyle (2006), however, found that “over 19,000 schools nationwide failed to make AYP in 2002-2003; more than 11,000 were identified as being in need of improvement” (p. 10). Hoff (2008) added that “almost 30,000 schools in the United States failed to make adequate yearly progress. . .in the 2007-2008 school year,” and “half of those schools missed their achievement goals for two or more years, putting almost one in five of the nation’s public schools in some stage of federally mandated process to improve student achievement.”

Unintended consequences of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, which includes the AYP mandate, are its de facto redefinition of the principal’s role as an instructional leader and the amount of time and collaboration required from school leaders to help teachers improve their teaching skills. Gaziel (1995) reported “A serious discrepancy between the amount of time principals spend doing important tasks and the time they think they should spend on them” (p. 184). Making AYP, the end-product of data analyses and detailed planning, means that principals must have the knowledge and ability to make decisions about curriculum, instruction, and professional development, a unique requirement for administrators who were trained as managers, not as instructional leaders.

Changing the principal-as-manager paradigm begins with a vision of the knowledge and skills instructional leaders should have. Jazzar and Algozzine (2006) advised those considering change that “it is difficult to define the role of a principal as the instructional leader” (p. 106), but “the educational reform movement of the last two decades has focused a great deal of attention on that role” (p. 104).

The winds of change

As pressure increased on schools to make AYP, state boards of education focused their attention on principals as curriculum specialists and discovered that few of them had been trained as instructional leaders. Alabama’s governor, responding to recommendations to change the way in which principals were being prepared in the state, commissioned a task force of teachers, civic leaders, and community representatives in 2004 to identify the knowledge and skills an instructional leader must have to increase student learning. The task force, working closely with the Southern Regional Education Board, presented its recommendations in 2005 to the State Board of Education (SBE), which approved the findings and created new standards for educational administration programs throughout the state.

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Source:  OpenStax, Preparing instructional leaders. OpenStax CNX. Jun 13, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11324/1.1
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