StreetScenes
2010
Bank Street's Margaret Terry Orr co-authors Preparing Principals for a Changing World
Bank Street Graduate Faculty member and Director of its Future School Leaders Academy, Margaret "Terry" Orr, has been in the forefront of leadership preparation evaluation research for the past decade. The enormous value of Orr's work was recognized with the "Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership Distinguished Researcher Award" at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA, the world's premier educational research organization) on March 24, 2008.
Margaret "Terry" Orr
Orr's book, Preparing Principals for a Changing World: Lessons from Effective School Leadership Programs, was co-authored with Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University; Debra Meyerson, Associate Professor at Stanford's School of Education; and Michelle LaPointe, formerly a research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education.
Says Orr, "Our book, Preparing Principals for a Changing World, is an outgrowth of a multi-year study funded by The Wallace Foundation to identify exemplary leadership preparation and development programs, profile their effective features, and show how they help facilitate successful outcomes in the schools." The study was led by Linda Darling-Hammond, and Bank Street's Principals Institute was one of the leadership programs profiled. The findings show that graduates of exemplary leadership preparation programs had better preparation experiences than did a comparison of principals nationally, and that as principals they were more engaged in leadership and school improvement practices that would strengthen teaching and learning.
"Our research documented how the successful leadership programs were structured, described the skills and knowledge the fledgling principals gained during their course of study, and then examined what the participants were actually able to accomplish in the real world as school leaders," says Orr. Not surprisingly, the successful programs had several similarities: aggressive recruitment of potential school leaders; close ties with schools in the community; hands-on mentoring by and training under expert principals; and a strong focus on cutting-edge theories of instructional and transformational leadership.
"Effective educational leadership is key to improving teacher performance, and thereby student performance," says Orr. "That is why good leadership preparation programs are so important. We hope that the ideas and suggestions in our study will help increase the number of exemplary leadership preparation programs, and result in our having many more highly qualified and innovative educational leaders."
Note: The book, Preparing Principals for a Changing World: Lessons from Effective School Leadership Programs, was published by Jossey-Bass in December 2009, and is available in most bookstores, as well as on Amazon.com, which also offers a Kindle edition.
The study may also be accessed on line at www.wallacefoundation.org under a slightly different title, Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World. This Wallace Foundation website also offers a downloadable executive summary of the study.
