The Long Road to Reform

Statewide efforts to improve principal preparation in Illinois can be traced back to 2000.¹ At the time, Illinois’s Type 75 certificate was a general administrative license that teachers could pursue to become a school leader, such as an instructional coach, department head, or principal.

In 2000, the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University (ISU) received a grant from the Wallace Foundation to begin a statewide initiative around principal preparation reform. This grant involved convening multiple institutions of higher education around the state that were interested in improvement efforts. The group, led by Erika Hunt, Lisa Hood, and Norm Durflinger, studied “the condition of school leadership preparation and development in Illinois” and released a report with recommendations for state agencies.² In 2002, the Wallace Foundation funded Illinois’s Springfield School District 186 to explore what could be done to improve the principalship at the district level.³ Diane Rutledge, superintendent during this time, was interested in evaluating the role of preparation and strengthening the partnership between her district and ISU.⁴

In 2005, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) funded ISU to convene the Commission on School Leader Preparation, marking the first time that a state agency convened a group around this topic.⁵ The commission’s resulting report, School Leader Preparation: A Blueprint for Change, affirmed that principal preparation needed significant reform and offered recommendations for institutions of higher education.⁶ The report held up the partnership between Springfield School District 186 and ISU, as well as two program partnerships that Chicago Public Schools had with New Leaders for New Schools and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as models of innovation in principal preparation reform.⁷

In 2006, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), which is responsible for educator licensure, joined IBHE to call for the creation of the Illinois School Leader Task Force, “charged specifically with developing strategies for the implementation of the commission’s recommendations.”⁸ Both regulatory agencies making this a priority brought legitimacy to the work. The 28-member Illinois School Leader Task Force, staffed by ISU, IBHE, and ISBE, set out to determine how to prepare principals to improve student learning. Steve Tozer, founder of UIC’s program and a former kindergarten teacher, was chosen to chair the task force. Its suggestions strongly resembled evidence-based criteria for effective principal preparation, which also aligned with key elements of UIC’s program.⁹ As Paul Zavitovsky, a leadership coach at UIC for 14 years said, “UIC’s program didn’t change as much in response to statewide reform efforts as statewide reform efforts mirrored what was being developed at UIC.”¹⁰

The task force recommended the state pursue the following:

1) "State Policies that set high standards for school leadership certification and align principal preparation, early career development, and distinguished principal recognition with those standards.

2) Formal Partnerships between school districts, institutions of higher education, and other qualified partners to support principal preparation and development.

3) Refocused Principal Preparation Programs committed to developing and rigorously assessing in aspiring principals the capacities that are most likely to improve student learning in PreK–12 schools."¹¹

Each recommendation came with detailed steps for implementation. These included creating a principal-specific endorsement focused on instructional leadership; revamping program approval criteria and requiring all programs to reapply; and creating a new licensure exam for principals based on updated standards. By requiring programs to partner with districts and view districts as their “clients,” they sought to ensure that programs meet the needs of local communities and schools. They also recommended that programs adopt highly selective admissions criteria and ensure that students have intensive, closely supervised residency experiences. Other than the use of the term “PreK–12 schools,” there was no mention of early learning in the task force report.

IBHE and ISBE then established multiple committees made up of a broad range of stakeholders to develop action plans for the recommendations. Materials from the various meetings that took place from 2008 to 2009 were made public and experts in different fields were asked to weigh in. From 2009 to 2010, the two agencies held numerous “dissemination meetings” around the state to share the proposed changes and gather feedback, bringing together more than 800 people.¹²

According to Tozer, “There was a window between the task force initiation in 2008 and passage of new state leadership endorsement law in 2010. This was the window in which pre-K became part of the leadership agenda.” And the Chicago-based Robert R. McCormick Foundation, whose work focuses on early learning, was the key player. As Sara Slaughter,¹³ a program director at McCormick at the time, recalls, “My observation was that more elementary schools were opening preschool classrooms, and existing preschool classrooms were not connecting to the K–12 system. I saw principal preparation as a tool.”

McCormick gave a grant to the Center for the Study of Education Policy at ISU to explore the role of principals in improving coordination and collaboration of early childhood education and elementary schools, based on ISU’s work convening the school leader task force.¹⁴ Slaughter also knew that Hunt and Hood were “bilingual actors in the education sphere,” meaning they spoke and understood early education and the K–12 space.¹⁵

In 2008, ISU convened the Leadership to Integrate the Learning Continuum (LINC) Advisory Group, assembling 50 key stakeholders across state agencies and programs, bridging silos between early childhood, K–12, and higher education.¹⁶ With support from McCormick, the group recommended ISBE broaden the principal endorsement to PreK–12 and incorporate early learning content and practice into preparation programs.¹⁷ Specifically, LINC recommended:

The Illinois State Board of Education and Illinois Board of Higher Education should expand criteria for principal preparation programs to include:

• "Developmentally appropriate practices and curricula from birth;

• Information about the Illinois Early Learning Standards in relation to the Illinois Learning Standards;

• Team-building and collaboration with early learning organizations;

• Internship/practicum experiences at all educational levels (early learning, elementary, secondary); and

• Early care and learning representatives as preparation program partners."¹⁸

The recommendations of this advisory group carried a lot of weight. This is not to say that discussion of early childhood would have been absent from the conversation without McCormick’s involvement. The early childhood advocacy community also played an active role. Joyce Weiner, senior policy manager for the Chicago-based Ounce of Prevention Fund, was a strong voice representing the early childhood field on the state task force. She remembers, “There were many conversations that were not early childhood or early elementary-focused at all. Having an early childhood policy voice at the table was helpful to making connections for others on the full continuum of children’s education, particularly the earliest years which build a foundation for all subsequent learning … people often overlook that first rung of the education ladder.”¹⁹ And when the IBHE- and ISBE-established committees were developing plans for implementing the task force recommendations, additional experts in early childhood education and other areas were invited to weigh in.²⁰

In May 2010, the final bill passed both the House and Senate with strong support. Sponsors of the bills in both chambers had been involved in the principal reform efforts for numerous years. The legislation was signed into law in June 2010 as Public Act 096-0903.²¹ Early childhood is specifically mentioned in two sections of the administrative code, highlighted below.²² First, in regard to program curricula:

And second, in regard to the internship requirement:

Experts and stakeholders were engaged throughout the process of creating rules and regulations to reflect the new legislation.²³ The final rules were passed in June 2011. Preparation programs had until June 2014 to receive approval under the new rules or shut down.²⁴ Eight years later, 27 programs offer educational leadership programs that lead to principal licensure, down from 34 in 2010.²⁵