Why?
School leaders have an impact on student outcomes such as reading and math scores, student attendance and discipline, and teacher outcomes. Over the past five years, the State Board of Education in Florida has adopted new state learning standards and leadership standards. As a result, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) identified a need to strengthen principal preparation program approval standards to align with new principal preparation program quality measures and leadership standards. Coordinating the development and implementation of these initiatives will improve the preparation and support principals, principal supervisors, and assistant principals receive through these programs.
What?
Over the past five years, the Region 7 Comprehensive Center (R7CC) has supported FDOE in developing and implementing policies, processes, and procedures to build and support effective school leaders by:
- Providing evidence-based strategies that school leadership teams can use to support struggling learners.
- Preparing research on the importance of school leaders, assistant principals, and principal supervisors to inform the creation of new state leadership standards.
- Gathering resources and best practices for how states can review and support principal preparation programs.
- Participating with stakeholders in mock site visits to leader and principal preparation programs.
- Co-creating processes and procedures to review principal preparation programs.
The R7CC currently supports FDOE in developing and implementing processes to review and approve principal preparation program initial applications, which had to be submitted for approval following the passage of new state leadership standards. These processes will be revised at the end of the year to support their sustained use by FDOE to ensure that all Florida principal preparation programs are aligned with the state leadership standards and are of high quality.
Impact?
Sustainable change brought about by the intensive and ongoing partnership between FDOE and R7CC includes the following:
- School leadership teams have been trained by FDOE on evidence-based practices aligned to new state learning standards.
- The FDOE and stakeholders used evidence-based practices in the development and implementation of new state leadership standards.
- The FDOE has established a process that will be used to review and approve principal and school leader preparation programs beginning in the 2023-2024 school year.