138 PREPARATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS
Professors of education leadership understand the necessity to revitalize leadership prepa-
ration such as the K-12 schools face in their own particular renewal pressures. “Now, more
than ever, there is a sense of urgency as many state and national level policy actors, urban dis-
tricts, foundations, and educational leadership faculty question how best to prepare leaders,
particularly given existing shortages of highly qualified principals and superintendents and the
complex demands of leading school reform efforts” (Black & Murtadha, 2007, pp. 3-4). Now
more than ever, there is a sense of urgency as a profession to be engaged in critical review and
development of principal preparation programs capable of preparing leaders for the 21st cen-
tury.
Given the elevated role of school leadership it was not surprising that Levine’s provoca-
tive assessment of school leadership preparation programs fomented considerable attention at
both national and state levels (Darling-Hammond, La Pointe, & Meyerson, 2007). Therefore
in a state response, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) formed the Commission on
School Leader Preparation in Illinois Colleges and Universities. The Commission was
charged with considering and evaluating Levine’s 2005 report, examining Illinois school
principal preparation programs, and recommending improvements in the preparation process.
In August of 2006, the Commission on School Leader Preparation in Illinois Colleges and
Universities published its report to the IBHE entitled, School Leader Preparation: A Blueprint
for Change, setting forth 25 recommendations, many focusing on school principal prepara-
tion. At the legislative level, the Illinois House of Representatives and Senate passed a joint
resolution requiring the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the IBHE, and the Office of
the Governor to jointly appoint a state task force to “recommend a sequence of strategic steps,
based on, but not limited to, the measures detailed in Blueprint for Change” (HROO66, p. 2,
2007) to implement improvements in school leadership preparation in the State.
The ISBE and the IBHE invited in August of 2007, the Illinois Council of Professors of
Educational Administration (ICPEA) to conduct a gap analysis to inform the work of the
ISBE/IBHE School Leader Task Force called for by the legislation. In acceptance, the ICPEA
formed a working committee to gather and analyze gap-analysis data, and provide a white pa-
per to the ISBE/IBHE School Leader Task Force. The definition of a gap analysis represents
the incongruence in respondent perceptions of school leadership skills. This paper reviews
some results of the surveys conducted as a part of the project to conduct the gap analysis of
principal preparation programs in Illinois.
WHICH LEADERSHIP SKILLS?
The ICPEA Special Working Committee (Committee) reviewed the literature concerning
the skills and competencies needed for principal leadership. Using information from several
sources, including the work conducted by the Illinois State Action Educational Leadership
Project (IL-SAELP), the Committee focused on the research from the Mid-continent Research
for Education and Learning (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003) that substantiated the fol-
lowing list of 17 skills/competencies for principals.