Principal Training on the Ground: Ensuring Highly Qualified Leadership

As our nation faces a severe principal shortage, Sandra Stein and Liz Gewirtzman offer a timely breakthrough―a detailed overview and explanation of a principal training model that can easily be implemented through school-university partnerships.

The authors base their book on the Aspiring Leaders Program (ALP), a collaboration of several New York City school districts and the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, The City University of New York. The program takes a unique approach to principal development that integrates the craft knowledge of master practitioners with the theoretical knowledge and research of college professors. Stein and Gewirtzman provide not only a provocative rationale for radically transforming school leadership development through such a program, but also a practical guide to get there through a model that includes:

• systems of accountability
• cycles of continuous improvement
• responsiveness to local realities
• delivery of a rigorous curriculum
• instruction as the center of the principal's role.

Sandra J. Stein is the Academic Dean of New York City's Leadership Academy, a leadership development program for aspiring, new, and veteran principals in the New York City public school system. She is an associate professor at the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, The City University of New York, and was the founding director of their Aspiring Leaders Program.

Liz Gewirtzman has served in various capacities with the New York City Board of Education, New York City Community School District 2, and San Diego city schools. A member of the team that co-constructed the Aspiring Leaders Program, she works as a consultant and continues to teach in the program at the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, The City University of New York.