Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008
Introducing ISLLC 2008
Comparisons with the 1996 ISLLC Standards
Authorship and Audiences for the Standards
Outcomes of the Standards
Introducing ISLLC 2008
What are Educational Leadership Policy Standards?
Educational Leadership Policy Standards serve as the foundation for all that states do to prepare, train, and evaluate school leaders in order to create leaders who can get the most from their students and teachers. Think of policy standards as the driving force behind big ideas in education leadership policy.
Leadership policy standards help provide a common vision and grounding for all steps along the career continuum of education leaders, beginning with leadership recruitment and training programs, to induction, evaluations, mid-career training, and to using veteran principals as mentors. Without policy standards, each of these critical pieces run a great risk of being individual links that don’t fit together to form the strong chain that is needed to form a coherent and effective vision of school leadership.
What are the Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008 as adopted by the National Policy?
The Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008 is a new and updated set of standards for education leadership. The 2008 standards update the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards for School Leaders, which were released in 1996 by the Council of Chief State School Officers. The 2008 standards are meant to serve as a starting point for guiding policymakers as they assess current education leadership goals, regulations, policies, and practices of education leaders. The six standards represent broad themes and priorities that education leaders – superintendents and other district leaders, principals, teacher leaders, and mentors – must keep central in their efforts in order to promote the success of every student. Each standard includes several functions that describe actions leaders should take to address and reach that standard.
Are these national standards?
The standards in Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008 are designed to serve as a model for states and districts in developing, evaluating, or updating their own standards. These standards provide high-level guidance and insight about the traits, functions of work, and responsibilities that will be asked of school and district leaders. Using the policy standards as a foundation, states can create a common language and bring consistency to educational leadership policy at all levels. To date, 43 states[1] have either used the original ISLLC Standards in part or in their entirety to guide education leadership policy planning and decisions.
How do the policy standards relate to other leadership standards?
One way to think of policy standards is as the foundation to other standards and system supports. There can be standards, expectations, or goals for other areas of education leadership, such as preparation and evaluation, but all must connect back to the policy standards. The policy standards portray the big ideas of education leadership and anchor the profession. More discreet connections are made from the policy standards to expectations for how leaders will perform on the job or how they will be trained at different stages of their careers. The standards present a comprehensive vision of what education leadership should look like and strive to accomplish.
While everything must go back to and align with policy standards, they can not do it all. In other words, themes must align between the different stages and areas of education policy, but the language and details will vary as you get closer to practice and classroom. Standards help give states and districts the targets and the grounding to develop professional development that addresses specific goals and targets. The overall objective is to help policymakers and practioners think through a career and identify the skills that must be mastered over time. The notion is that career development never ends and that standards can guide development all the way through mastery.
How do you set up a coherent statewide leadership system?
There is no one way to build a coherent statewide leadership system. But you have to begin by bringing together the major stakeholders at the state, district, and even local levels and asking, “What are the big ideas?” You have to start with policy standards; they will anchor the system. One cannot go any deeper if you don’t have the big ideas mapped out.
District representatives will want to know, “How do we do that at the district and/or school level?” or “What will that look like in practice?” Ultimately, the closer you get to the classroom and practice, the more granular the goals and expectations become. Still, you need to first establish the policy standards at the state level to create a coherent system of leadership. The bottom line is that if the state and district systems are not working together, you are stuck and cannot create a coherent leadership system. Everything should be grounded in policy standards for coherence and alignment throughout your system.
Suggested Resource: A Wallace Perspective: Leadership for Learning: Making the Connections Among State, District and School Policies and Practices
[1] Toye, C.; Blank, R.; Sanders, N.M.; & Williams, A. (2007). Key State Education Policies on PK-12 Education, 2006. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers. P. 29. Available: http://www.ccsso.org/publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=348
Comparisons with the 1996 ISLLC Standards
What is the difference between old and new ISLLC?
It is important to note that the ISLLC 2008 standards do not represent a complete overhaul of the 1996 standards. In general, ISLLC 2008 keeps the “footprint” of the original ISLLC standards, but is written with a much stronger focus on policy. It is also written for institutions and individuals who help set education leadership policy. Appendix 1 (page 18) of the Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008 document provides a quick comparison chart between ISLLC 1996 and ISLLC 2008.
The developers of ISLLC 2008 backed up a bit and decided to do less. The original set of standards was overwhelming. The new standards represent the basics and what could be learned from an extensive review of research and knowledge in the field. The 1996 standards were not backed up by this level of research and had become somewhat dated. ISLLC 2008, for example, addresses critical topics, such as social justice, diversity, and the importance of student data. It is no longer possible for states and districts to wait for these topics to work their way into the field. Standards help put you ahead of these issues. Even with the new material, ISLCC 2008 is simplified. For example, it does not include the dispositions that were part of the original standards.
Why were knowledge, dispositions, and skills not included in the new standards? What was the rationale for dropping the specific delineation of knowledge, dispositions, and performances in favor of performance-based language only?
The 2008 standards use functions to define each standard, rather than the “knowledge, skills, and dispositions” used in the 1996 Standards. This change is intended to prevent confusion with practice or other standards that may deal more specifically with knowledge, skills, and dispositions.
The reason that the NPBEA/ISLLC Research Panel suggested that they drop the specific delineation of knowledge, dispositions, and performances in favor of performance-based language in functional clusters is that the panel felt the updated standards should really be designed to outline broad policy direction. The panel felt that the NCATE/ ELCC Program Standards should be more specific regarding program criteria. NPBEA is currently working on updating the NCATE/ELCC Program Standards.
The CCSSO State Consortium on Education Leadership (SCEL) created and recently released the Performance Expectations and Indicators for Education Leaders, an ISLLC-Based Guide to Implementing Leader Standards and a Companion Guide to the Educational Leadership Policy Standards: ISLLC 2008. This resource was created in response to requests for performance specifications to implement professional standards in leadership policies, programs, and practices. This document is now the place that describes those expectations through dispositions, elements, and indicators and operationalizes the policy standards at a more granular and proper level.
What do we know now that we didn't in 1996?
The last decade has produced more research than ever about education leadership and the role that education leaders can and should play in raising student achievement. This research shows that states benefit from leadership standards, and that goal- and vision-setting by leaders, which are articulated in the standards, are essential for raising student achievement.
A comprehensive online database rich with empirical research reports, policy analyses, leadership texts, and other authoritative resources is now available. The research in the database, as identified by the NPBEA/ISLLC research panel, is a representative sample of 83 empirical and 47 sources of knowledge references which support the six 2008 ISLLC standards. This database reflects the most recent knowledge about schools and leadership. It is available at www.ccsso/ISLLC2008Research.
Are some ISLLC standards more important than others?
Each of the ISLLC 2008 standards is equally important, though states and school districts may prioritize and emphasize one more of them through policies and practices as appropriate to meet local needs. Overall, the ISLLC 2008 standards represent different qualities that research and best practice have identified as crucial to effective leadership and improved student achievement. Again, these standards are not meant to be static or used as a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, they are a starting point for creating and enforcing state-level and locally-tailored standards and approaches for developing and retaining high-quality school leaders.
What are functions listed under each of the six 2008 ISLLC Standards?
Functions describe actions that leaders should take to address a given standard. A leader who exemplifies the standard should demonstrate each function. Every standard includes several functions to help define clarify the behaviors that would be expected as a result of policies and activities that are aligned with the respective standard.
Authorship and Audiences for the Standards
Who wrote the new education leadership policy standards?
A Steering Committee of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA) developed and guided a process for updating the 1996 ISLLC Standards for School Leaders. The 10 member organizations of NPBEA represent nearly all education leadership stakeholders, including professors of educational administration, accreditors of university programs, principals, and state chiefs. In addition, the Steering Committee created a 12-member NPBEA/ISLLC Research Panel to review and report on the relevant research that underpins the revised standards.
Who's the intended audience for these 2008 ISLLC Standards? Who should use them, and how?
State chief state school officers, governors, state legislators, state board members of education, district leaders, principals, teacher leaders, and teacher mentors all can benefit from the standards by using them to set priorities and guide planning in all aspects of education leadership policy. Click here to access a visual of what these standards can drive and influence.
Governors, state legislators, and state schools chiefs should use these standards as a guide as they work together to update, revise, and develop their own leadership standards. This could mean adopting these standards in whole or in part, or adapting them to state needs around preparation, licensure, and ongoing training and assessment. These standards are the first step toward creating innovative policies and programs that ensure investments of time and resources deliver the best possible results for our schools and students.
Superintendents and other district-level leaders as well as principals can use these standards to set priorities that guide their work. The standards might not tell them exactly what to do or how to do it, but they can set the priorities around which those other decisions can be made. These standards describe effective education leadership that can raise student achievement and transform schools.
School board members can use the standards to get more involved in policy-writing and decision-making around leadership issues. Because the policy standards provide a complete picture of effective education leadership, they are for school board members to use in setting policies and priorities for evaluating leaders and making funding decisions around leadership development.
What direction should we give the research community on the integration of standards, evaluations, and other pieces of leadership policy?
One of the areas addressed in developing ISLLC 2008 is that the standards are an evolutionary process. Moving forward, we need to be careful about how research is designed. We need to be very specific about setting research objectives. More research is needed on the drivers behind student achievement and good leadership. But the goal always is to develop instructional leadership skills that help promote student achievement.
Outcomes of the Standards
How will these standards improve student achievement?
The standards alone won’t improve student achievement, but they do serve to establish policies and practices that can help all students achieve at higher levels. Research shows that education leadership quality is second only to classroom instruction in school-related factors that have an impact on student achievement.[1] Research also finds that teachers rarely improve student achievement without effective leaders.[2] Therefore, these standards can be used to develop and promote policies to improve education leadership – a critical step toward transforming schools and classrooms.
How will the standards impact teaching?
Education leadership standards can help keep education leaders – principals in particular – in sync with the priorities, skills, and curricular focus of their teaching staffs. Such disconnects can undermine the efforts of both school leaders and teachers. The 2008 education leadership standards emphasize both goal- and vision-setting, which helps align the expectations of education leaders, teachers, and students. The standards also call for leaders to take an active role in creating instructional programs that are conducive to student learning and staff professional growth.
How do these standards inform what is being taught in education leadership preparation programs?
The most important thing is to make sure that the administrators who oversee higher education programs understand that policy standards exist and then make sure they understand what those standards mean and their intended purpose. Even today there are different levels of familiarity with policy standards.
Serving as a foundation, these policy standards are well poised to influence and drive training and preparation programs. ISLLC 2008 plays out at the preparation program level by establishing performance expectations and lends itself to aid in and can facilitate curriculum development, candidate assessment, and accountability. Certainly ISLLC 2008 is already informing the NCATE accreditation process and program standards that guide NCATE’s work. In 2002, the NPBEA-appointed Educational Leadership Constituent Council released Standards for Advanced Programs in Educational Leadership; they are now reviewing those standards so that they will be aligned with ISLLC 2008.
[1] Leithwood, Kenneth, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, & Kyla Wahlstrom. (2004) How Leadership Influences Student Learning. New York, NY: The Wallace Foundation., p. 5.
[2] Leithwood et al. (2004), p. 70.
