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Leadership in the Principal's Office--Mayor Bloomberg Style

New York Voices kicks off its year-long coverage of the city's Leadership Academy, Mayor Bloomberg's intensive training program for aspiring school principals with two interviews.

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR., CEO OF THE LEADESHIP ACADEMY

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Mr. Knowling, what is the genesis of the Leadership Academy? Why do we need it?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, the system needed some form of reinvention relative to education reform. If you look around the country at school systems, urban school systems that have tried to reinvent themselves, you know, it's tough enough in the private sector to see a company try to reinvent itself. In fact, there are not many examples out there where it's been done. Obviously, in school systems, which are probably some of the bigger bureaucracies around, I'm sure that that's a dawning [sic]task. And what I would really sort of pinpoint in this particular reform is that the mayor and the chancellor truly have sort of zeroed in on the most important level of change. That is, it starts with leadership and understanding where is the instruction point within an organization so that you can, indeed drive a changed agenda and there's -- this is sort of a no-brainer in a school system -- the level where all the rubber meets the road is in the building and you can talk about the empirical evidence that is out there or just use common sense. Student achievement -- there is a direct correlation to the capacity of the building leader. So the academy, in essence, truly needed to be invented, or some mechanism like that so that you can, in fact, focus on the management of the enterprise.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now you've spent most of your professional life on the cutting edge of the telecommunications industry. How did you get from there to here, why did you take on this job?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, there's a pretty compelling case here. Here you have an unprecedented opportunity in the city of New York where a mayor and a chancellor who are finally aligned.

Now I had no roots in New York, in fact, my only ventures into the city have been in my roles in telecommunications and coming in here to deal with the financial institutions in the market. But I knew Joel Klein from a prior association when he was at the Anti-trust Department. I actually worked with Joel on a potential case. So I wouldn't say that we were friends, but we were acquaintances and I was very impressed with him as an anti-trust lawyer.

And when I initially came to spend some time with Joel, I really didn't come thinking it was an employment opportunity, because I have a job. But one I saw that this reform has the right components, which is, the focus is on the leader. Number 2, you've got an unprecedented opportunity here with the fact that you will attrit over 600 principles [sic] in a three, four year period that allows you the opportunity to change the mix. And if you know, as you do, anything about organizational transformation, people who invent and live in a system, are truly incapable of changing that system. So there has to be an external catalyst. So I can serve as the external catalyst, the academy can serve as an external catalyst and then there's the fact that you've got 600 new people coming into that job.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: And that's because you expect as a natural course of events for 600 principles [sic] to be leaving in the next three years?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: That's correct. The attrition numbers in this system are pretty predictable. This year alone there were 272 new principles that went into the principle [sic] job this September. It's sort of like actuary tables. It's a pretty predictable kind of a process. So 600 is a good, safe number, not only from those who were planning to retire in that type of process, but the creation of new small schools, some hundred, two hundred of those, you have to add that to the mix and that's where you come up with, you know, a notion of about 200, or about 600 people that have to come into the new job.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: By the way, Jack Welch is often associated with this leadership institute. What role does he play in the academy?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, Jack's an advisor to the Leadership Academy, his role is -- first of all, you must understand the first time that I met Jack, relative to this new experience, his first words were, I'm looking forward to an opportunity so that I can learn something. Jack, pretty much, he does what we ask him to do. And sometimes that is to perhaps meet with the leadership team, to sort of give us a view of his relative to some of the modules or the work that we're doing. In other cases if we've got the top department of education leaders together, and for instance, we had a session where we were talking about how do you manage the whole process of people selection, what's your operating mechanism around people? How do you do performance management? It was a wonderful two-hour interactive session with Jack.

So we sort of view him as a resident advisor, he's a thought partner for me, personally, in terms of the material that we are putting together in all the various tracks. He's a guy that we can call that will open doors for us in terms of helping us to establish better and deeper relationships with a few of the corporate partners. So I don't define his role in a box with red lines around it. It pretty much is where could we use someone with his capacity to help us further the cause of the academy.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now the aspiring principles that are participating in the leadership academy, what qualities were you looking for when you were selecting them?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well we actually had a fairly thorough process that said, we're not looking in particular for a guidance counselor or an AP or a teacher, but someone who aspires to get to the principal's job and perhaps the traditional road of perhaps 17 1/2 years in the system and finally getting to that job...who wants the job now? Who has an aspiration to be the building leader today?

And so there was not a set criteria in terms of who could apply. We did go through a nomination process from our superintendents, but going forward it will be both a nominated process as well as open. And we expect greater than 2,000 applicants this year and there's a very defined process in terms of the gates that people have to go through in order to show that they are the right sort of candidate that we think would make a great principal after a 15-month experience.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: How did you chose among the aspiring principals who applied to the program?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: I would say it was desire, but then more importantly, you've got to pass some screens, in terms of what's your vision for a school. Tell me about the work that you have done where you have turned around either a class or a group of students. Also talk about your accomplishments as an educational leader. Talk to us about situations where you have, in fact, changed the outcome because you had a solution set or an approach that yielded student success somewhere along the road.

So you go through that sort of a process in a written application. And by the way that written application also comes with some recommendations that we take very seriously. If you get through that gate then there's a series of interviews that you have to go through and it's not an interview where you sit with me and you can perhaps have a nice engaging conversation with me. It's an interview where we have a cross-section of people and it's a panel of three. I think it's a tough screen, because we're going to be testing for the educational, if you will, competency...We're going to be testing for, are you up for the rigorous challenge that this 15-month experience is all about. And based upon that, we will then sample some of your written work at the end of that process and then it's a real tough decision of who are going to be the 90 people that become that cohort.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now, are you looking for people who already have demonstrated some leadership ability to participate in the leadership academy, or is that something that you can teach people if they don't have it?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Typically, in school systems, there's not a lot of premium placed on being a true transformational leader. What you are is a great transactional manager. So it's rare that you're going to see a large quantity or doses of leadership. When you do, I think that that's an added benefit. But what's going to happen over a 15-month period is we're truly going to help you assess where you are in terms of strengths and weaknesses. We're going to work with you to develop your leadership capabilities. We're going to equip you with tools and mechanisms and processes so that you can reach into the tool bag, as you get into situational problems and be a heck of a lot more effective than you were before you came to this process.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now, you've been called a change agent's change agent. Is that what you're ultimately looking for in the kind of development you want to see? You want to create change agents? That's what this system needs?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: That may be too strong a word. I think what we're looking for are people who embrace change. People who are willing to expand their horizon, expand their thought process, look at their approach, to not only instruction, but as a transformational leader. And people who are life-long learners. You'll find that it doesn't -- let's take the word instructional off of leader. You would look at the components of what is defined as an instructional leader and I'll guarantee you, if you take instructional off of that description, you'll find the kind of individual that I would be searching for in the private sector. You are looking for someone who has a vision. Someone who has a set of values. Someone who can articulate a desired state and at the end of the day, whether you are a principal, a CEO, a business owner, we're all about the business of how do we enlist people to our point of view, to our agenda, to our outcome of making something happen either by delivering a product to the market, a profit to a shareholder or turning children into high performers.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: In one way or another Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Welch, and you yourself all come from the corporate world. How do you transfer the skills and perspectives from the corporate world to the world of New York City public schools?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: You know I find it interesting that people in this school system are a little bit intimidated by business people coming in. And I've gone into many of our training development workshops where people have said up front, I'm not so sure that there's anything that business people can teach us. And I would just say, I think that's a very narrow view, because let's take the words education and business away from it. It really doesn't matter what industry we talk about, there are best practices that go on in organizations and enterprises all the time. What the school system needs, and this could be New York City, it could be other school systems. We need to learn how to pick up best practices from each other. We need to learn how to not be seduced into the notion that if it wasn't invented here, it can't possibly be good, because an interesting thing that has happened is that I have learned so many great practices from the educators that when I go back into the private sector, trust me, I'll be using those best practices.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: What are some of those things?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Simple things, there was a young man that talked about doing what he called an information email to all of his teachers and he did it on a fairly frequent basis. And it was to talk about things that were going on in the school, gossip in the schools, validating rumors, etc. I think it's such a neat mechanism. And the morning I heard him talk about it, that very next morning, I got on email at 6:00 A.M. and constructed a message to the academy staff along that same line. Again, it was a best practice I took from one of the educators.

Another best practice that I've picked up in the system, in dealing with a group of principals: I found out that there's a principal that really did a lot of symbolic things to talk about the transformation and what she was doing to insure that they were celebrating along the way. And in particular, what she did to sort of dramatically show in the school that a certain practice that they were used to doing was finished. That there was a new way. They held a funeral and they buried the old practice, and then they had a wedding to sort of celebrate the newness.

Well, if you think about that its symbolic things, because part of transformation is changing the language, changing the orientation...to get on to new beginnings was a paradigm shift that's very visible. I'm going to think of those kind of mechanisms when I go back. So I am learning from them, I know for a fact they are learning from me, and that's what's going to lift the entire system.

Here's an important point: Two schools sitting in the same proximity of a two-block radius in the city, any borough, it doesn't matter where we go. The ability of those two schools to learn best practices from each other is non-existent, for two reasons. One there's no collaboration and two, it's a system that in the past has held its information close to the vest.

Now some have told me, Bob, it's even more profound than that. You can have three schools in the same building and there's no best-practice sharing. Well, the hallmark of the private sector is that we learn from each other. Imagine what would have happened to Jack Welch if those businesses had not been boundary-less. I mean it's the cornerstone of all of the greatness that happens in the private sectors. We've got to do that in the school system. That's where the academy is going to become the repository for best practices and the organization that will facilitate that kind of meaningful discussion.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now, both the mayor and the chancellor have voiced frustrations about the countless restrictions that pervade the public school system, including which hamper what principles can do in a given school. How can principles, aspiring principles really become change agents when facing so many obstacles?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: You know I hope my answer doesn't sound flip. In this system today, with all the constraints, there are a score of principles that in spite of all the barriers, budgetary, union, recalcitrant teacher, it does not matter. There are people in the system today that, in spite of those barriers, get it done and get it done with excellence. Part of teaching people how to become transformational leaders is that you don't whine about the hand you've been dealt. You sort of look at your cards, you face reality that this is the hand I've been dealt. Now, one of the old adages my mother taught me early in my career, when life deals you lemons make lemonade.

What we're going to teach people is given the constraints, how do you...take control of your destiny and make it happen in spite of the barriers. That's what leadership is all about. All of us can sit and whine, and a little cheese with this whining, we'd have a nice pity party. This is not about talking about those things.

And that's not to say that we're naive in the academy. No, we acknowledge those things up front. In fact, let's talk about it. And then let's now talk about okay, so if that's the barrier, what does it take, what does a transformational leader do to get beyond that barrier. Because you know what, we have to get beyond it, because it's all about the kids. The kid is not going to understand, well, there's a barrier. The kids not going to understand, we didn't have the money. Okay? So we've got to teach these folks how to become...leaders to get beyond the constraints.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now you, in the past, in a different context, have talked about the culture of entitlements. As I understood it, it was a culture where people thought that the institution they worked for existed for them rather than to serve the people whom they were meant to serve. Can you teach the kind of leadership that will be able to transform even that?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, transformation is not a one-time event. In other words, I don't go in as a new principal and because Bob Knowling, the new inspiring principal that's been assigned to your school shows up and he's got a motivating vision, he's got passion around the job, he looks beyond the barriers...the constraint still stays there. But transformation is about every day staying on target with the mission, keeping the kids as your primary focus and every day, it's sort of like, when I've been in companies I sort of every day go home and I measure -- I measure, did the coach here win today or did I win? It's going to be that kind of a -- it's sort of like wrestling with a gorilla every day and you heard the expression, you don't rest when you get tired. You rest when the gorilla gets tired.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: So will you ever be able to know that in fact, you did succeed in what you were trying to do with the leadership academy?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: I know that at the end of the day there's only one metric that counts. That is, did we move student achievement? And when I say move, not incrementally move, but did we substantially improve over a period of time, student achievement. If you believe in the premise that there's a direct correlation of student achievement to the leadership capacity of the building leader, then the academy's only measure has to be that. Now there are some interim sort of things that we should see, in terms of the language, the tone, the morale in the environment, coherency in terms of how the teaching and learning takes place. But over the long haul, it's got to be that we lifted the system.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: When will you know, yep, this is working? When you were running or being a change agent for corporations, you could tell, because profits were up, costs were down. When will you know when this is working?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, my earlier answer really does say the ultimate gain, but there are some things that I can tell you right now. I know we're having the right effect. How do I know that? Because people are starting to articulate common themes and messages, the language of the system is starting to change. The tone, the morale of the organization is being lifted. Principles are coming back from experiences in the academy and are saying, I'm different and my approach has been altered in terms of what I'm going to do to maximize student achievement.

Now, the hardest part about all development, and I use the analogy of church, I haven't found too many people who are bad people on Sunday, but when it comes to put that into application on Monday morning, we sometimes fall a little short. And what we've got to do from the workshop setting, where we are doing this intense sort of development, it's got to translate into what do you do differently on the job Monday morning. And that's the task of a school system, it's the same challenge that I face in the private sector. And it happens over time.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Now how much time do you think you have before the parents of the kids going to these schools know it.

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, I'm hoping that the parents are going to get a lift from this system in the first year, because of the organizational structure, changes that actually gave parents a lot more, if you will, servicing in terms of the parent coordinators, more resources into the school, and hopefully a principal that understands the importance of parents and their role in the education of the child. But then second, I think that what you'll start to have happen is that when the system changes and the leaders truly become consistent in their messaging and more importantly their behavior, students will go home and students will talk about those changes as well. So parents should see a number of things relative to the school environment as changing. I'm being embraced as a parent. I'm heard as a parent. I'm collaborated with as a parent, and then the thing is, as a parent myself, you hear your child come home and start talking about the positive environment of the school.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: When are you going to pack up and go back to the corporate world that you came from?

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Well, I'm not sure what my time frames are. Obviously I do want to go back to the private sector, but I am committed to this cause. I believe whole-heartedly in Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg. In fact, I use the expression, you really don't join companies -- you join people...And I'd like to be here long enough so that I can see the fruits of the labor start to yield the fruit, if you will, and more importantly, I have to leave at a time when I feel that the work that I started actually does have an end-game and that there is someone here who can take it to the end-game.

RAFAEL PI ROMAN: Well, Mr. Knowling, good luck to you and thank you so much.

ROBERT E. KNOWLING, JR.: Thank you.

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Interview with Dr. Sandra J. Stein, academic dean of the New York City Leadership Academy. September 12, 2003

QUESTION: So, how did the Leadership Academy begin? What was the motivation behind its creation?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: The Chancellor, Joel Klein, determined that the principals were the most important levers of change in the city schools. And he was looking at schools with a range of performance, but there was a large concentration of poor performance and unacceptable performance within the city schools. He then determined that he wanted to start a leadership academy that would prepare aspiring principals, new principals, and current sitting principals for the leadership challenge ahead for a major transformation, so the leadership academy was first announced in mid-December 2002 as an idea. And then they recruited Bob Knowling, the CEO, and myself to lead this effort.

QUESTION: How were the aspiring principals selected?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: We were looking for two things in selecting candidates. We were looking for instructional knowledge and leadership potential. So we want people who could be both instructional and transformational leaders. We had over 400 applications for 90 slots. And we were looking for people who could communicate both in writing and in an interview format that they had the tenacity, the wherewithal, the energy, the edge and the values that we are looking for in future leaders. So they first had a written application that they all filled out that included essays and letters of recommendations.

We had also asked for nominations from the regional superintendents, the sitting superintendents at the time, as well as their sitting principals, if they were teachers or staff developers in their schools. Each application was read by three readers and from that we had a sub-set people who advanced to the interview stage. The interviews were done in panels. We had three panel members for each interviewee. And we asked them just straight questions as an interview. And we also did role-plays with them to get a sense of their leadership voice and their leadership potential.

So there were two types of people that we took--I would say three types of people that we took. One had deep instructional knowledge and clear leadership capacity already. Another had deep instructional knowledge and we wanted to develop the leadership capacity. And we had to see the leadership potential in them. And then a third had the leadership and we needed to help them get more deep instructional knowledge.

You need to see leadership potential. I don't think that you can take just anybody and transform them. I think you need to see a drive, a sense of purpose, a commitment, a level of energy that you can work with to channel in the direction of leadership. I do think that a lot that you do to make people real potential leaders, and I don't think we always look to the right information to determine whether somebody has potential.

QUESTION: What were the overreaching goals of the Academy?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: The overreaching goals were to create transformational leaders in all schools. So the aspiring principals program just focuses on people who have not been principals yet and who could be principals with the right type of development. The on-boarding program for new principals is to prepare people who have had training somewhere. They have had their certification. We are not sure what that training may or may not have looked like, and we want to prepare them for opening the schools and support them during their first year. And then the program for the incumbent principals, which is the principal leadership development program, is to help all the sitting principals become transformational leaders in their schools.

Right now our projections tell us that over the next three years we are expecting through natural attrition up to 600 principals to leave the system. There is going to be an incredible demand for the people who have gone through this rigorous training program. And for the people who make it through this program, they will be offered a principal position on completion.

QUESTION: Traditionally how were principals trained and hired?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: Traditionally and currently principals train at universities. In some states, universities are the sole provider of principal credentialing. And the state only will accept university-based credits. In some states they have deregulated that and allowed different providers, non-profits and private providers to train and prepare principals. And school districts have taken the initiative in some cases to prepare their own labor force for leadership. In New York, the current situation is still, the state still regulates that the universities are the sole provider of credits towards these programs. But the upcoming legislative changes will require a partnership between universities and district-based leadership to develop and deliver these programs.

The typical university programs also reflected just the need for credit accumulation. And some programs were very effective at providing meaningful learning opportunities within just 18 credits, plus a six-credit internship. Which was New York's requirements. Other programs were not as effective and you couldn't really tell necessarily what you would be getting going into a program where you were just amassing credits. And you didn't know whether or not the actual teaching and learning would be relevant for the job performance, which was a main reason why the chancellor wanted to establish something different. He was not satisfied with the level of preparedness that people coming out of university programs had going into schools.

QUESTION: How was the instruction of the Leadership Academy organized?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: We created for them problem scenarios, one for each school level. So there was a school called Change Elementary School, which I wrote with a number of collaborators, a problem scenario that described the school in great detail. It included the history of the school, the three principles that were in the building prior to you, the new principal. It had the staff and staff profiles of every single person on staff, both teaching as well as custodial staff, security staff, paraprofessionals, the leadership team. It gave them a sense of who are the individuals in my school both personally and professionally. And then talked about the interactions between the individuals. What are the cliques in the school? Who is not talking to whom because we think they dated last year? They are on grade level and we need them to talk to each other. That kind of information.

We also gave them a budget for the school that reflected the current budgetary allocations in the Department of Education. And we gave them an actual physical layout of the school, which has implications. If you are going to reschedule the school, you probably might change where some teachers are located within the building.

QUESTION: What we have seen over the course of this documentary--would we see a similar type of program in a university setting?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: It is unusual to see the type of pedagogy that we have used in this program in other programs. The university approach to teaching is typically a professor comes in to a classroom and delivers a lecture. And maybe there is some group work, but it may be different from week to week. And there is some thought put into what the actual job of the principal is. But university professors are encouraged to teach what they know based on their typically narrowly defined research agendas. So if I happen to be a researcher on English language learners and I know all the theory of language acquisition, I might teach the theory of language acquisition without doing the hard thinking of what does this mean for actual schools, with the students that they get, with the capacity that they have to deliver the type of instruction that students need.

Problem-based learning pedagogy really creates a simulated environment where participants get to practice being the principal. And within a problem-based framework, we simulate the world of the principal and put them in project teams so that they are constantly negotiating with one another and learning the skills of collaboration, learning to be more comfortable with interdependency, with relying on others and with doing projects that they will actually have to do as a school leader. For example, we had them reprogram the school in our problem scenario so that the schedule reflected more time for both adult and student learning.

QUESTION: Of the incumbent principals, how many really need this reinforcement?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: I think it depends on how you look at need. If you think that student low academic performance among students in someone's school demonstrates a need for a different type of leadership or for the leader to do something differently, then we have a number of principals who could use some help and support in figuring out what their next step should be. How do you figure out what the leverage points in your school are so that you can really make the types of the changes that are in the best interest of student learning. There are a number of principals, sitting principals who are enormously successful. And we want to leverage and disseminate their knowledge to others. And that is another function of the academy really, is to be able to leverage and disseminate the best practices that we find within the city system.

QUESTION: What is the role of the principal in regard to staff, parents and instruction?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: We frame the role of the principal as the instructional leader. That their job is to align all resources, time, money, staff, parents, everything, in the interest of instruction and teaching and learning in the classrooms. So one of their main functions is to organize adult learning in the service of student learning. How do the adults figure out what they need to know to best serve the learning needs of the students. In regards to all the other functions that make a principal's day incredible hectic, and at times very disjointed, there are strategies that we can teach to help people figure out how to distribute leadership, how to hire effectively, how to create a culture that is about continuous improvement and continuous learning and continuous learning that really aligns every resource in the school in the service of instruction.

QUESTION: The role of the principal is changing with regard to jurisdiction. How much control does a principal have with regard to staff, whether it is custodial staff, or administration staff?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: I think if we think about influence, we actually have more to work with. If you look at technical control, there are a number of contractual labor agreements that limit some of what the principal can do. However, the most effective principals have learned how to strategically work within those constraints to be able to provide opportunities to teachers, to custodian staff members, to parents, to anybody in the building, so that they really are getting the best out of people and know when to give up. I think we really want people to be strategists. I think we want people to be strategists so that they can learn how to work effectively within an incredibly complex system. And anticipate the resistance that they will face and move forward toward their instructional goals.

QUESTION: Can principals hire their own staff, their own teachers? Is it possible to replace teachers that are unsatisfactory?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: It takes a considerable amount of work to ask a teacher to leave based on their teaching performance. It is a worthwhile endeavor if the teacher is not working in the service of students. What is more common, however, are teachers who need support, coaching, a challenge, something that will move them from where they are to where they need to go. And to help principals to figure out the difference between the people who really need support and the people who should really not be in the profession is an important task.

QUESTION: The higher performing schools are easier, the more desirable schools for teachers to work in. How does a principal get teachers hired in lower performing schools?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: I think that principals can attract very engaged, energetic, committed, passionate teachers who are actually interested, who really see schools, public schooling as a way to democratize, as a way to spread resources. And whose commitments and convictions are aligned with actually teaching in a school that is resource strapped, that does not have the type of capacity that we sometimes see in higher performing schools. I think the way that you have to do that though as a principal is to provide the necessary support for those teachers so that they are equipped to address the multiple issues that they face every day and focus on instruction.

QUESTION: They struggled to create a "mission-vision" statement. How important is a "mission-vision" to a school?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: It is incredibly important. Not only that the school has a mission and vision, but they know what they are working toward, and that they have a collective process for all community members to participate and construct the mission and vision. So the point of the exercise of having them have a vision statement in the very beginning of the program was two fold. One is, think about how do you set your vision for a school. And this was only after doing analysis of the school. And what should the project look like so that everybody feels that that vision reflects their work and the school's as well.

QUESTION: How rigorous in the program?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: The program is very intense and very rigorous and really mirrors the work of the principal. And we have had some people in this first group, six, who have decided that they don't want to be a principal. So to our minds, it is better that they find out during the preparation phase rather than when they accept their jobs.

QUESTION: Where are the aspiring principals now?

DR. SANDRA J. STEIN: In terms of the program, they have completed the summer intensive portion of the Aspiring Principals Program. Which means that they will have been with us for eight weeks during the summer, seven weeks with us full time, and that last week they were transitioning into their residency schools. They work together through the problem scenario, doing programming and data analysis and professional development and leading instruction in a fake school.

Now they will move into real schools where they are aspiring principal residents. They are in pairs. They are being with a mentor principal. They are all over the city in the schools. And their job in the school is to prepare themselves to be ready to open a school next year at this time. So they have a residency project that they have to do, which makes it exceptionally focused and it lasts the entire academic year. And they also have a number of responsibilities that they will take on in the school so that they can develop their own capacity to open schools.

What has been wonderful about the schools is that they have taken the knowledge that they learned and developed over the summer and already brought it into their schools.

We have already been asked to double our numbers for next year in the aspiring principals program. I hope, and I think we all hope, that the academy will serve a function to provide a model of what is possible, and help universities and other providers shape their professional development opportunities in ways that will render our existence over separate entities eventually unnecessary. I don't think that will happen in one year.

The experience of the academy that will stay with them as they move into being principals is that everything that we have asked them to do is actually what they would have to do as a school leader. So they will remember the experiences we programmed in the school maximizing instruction, it won't be the first time they are doing it when they are on the job. They will remember working with others and struggling to work with others so that when they are on the job they have more skills for that work. And they will have each other, so that they have built in thinking partners.

If you and I are in a program and I am facing a challenge, I can call you up and say, help me think through this. Because I know you will take the time and investment in my learning because I have already and will continue to do that for you.

— Rafael Pi Roman and Robert E. Knowling, Jr.; Dr. Sandra J. Stein
Leadership Academy
New York Voices
2003-11-05
http://www.thirteen.org/nyvoices/features/yearofchange.html

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INDEX OF OUTRAGES

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