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Executive Summary

Today, school principals are asked to lead in a new world marked by unprecedented responsibilities, challenges, and managerial opportunities. Are principal preparation programs equipping their charges for this new role? We examined the content of instruction at a stratified sample of the nation’s principal preparation programs, including the programs training the most candidates, the programs regarded as the most prestigious, and more typical programs.

We surveyed 56 programs and collected at least four “core” course syllabi from 31 that met the standards permitting systematic coding for a total of 210 syllabi. The syllabi yielded 2,424 total course weeks. Key findings include: 

• Generally, there were surprising similarities across the various types of programs. 
• Just 2% of 2,424 course weeks addressed accountability in the context of school management or school improvement and less than 5% included instruction on managing school improvement via data, technology, or empirical research. 
• Eleven percent of 2,424 course weeks made mention of or reference to statistics, data, or empirical research in some context. 
• Eleven percent of course weeks dealt with instructional management issues like curriculum development, pedagogy, classroom management, and learning theory. 
• Of 360 course weeks devoted to personnel management, just twelve weeks mentioned teacher dismissal and nine mentioned teacher compensation. Just 11% of course weeks devoted to personnel management addressed the recruitment, selection, or hiring of new teachers. 
• Forty-two percent of courses on technical knowledge of school law, school finance, and facilities did not entail a final assessment to ensure that students have mastered the content. 
• One percent of course weeks dealt with school public relations and small business skills, while less than one percent addressed parental or school board relations.

Critics often assert that education schools are ideological. Is there evidence of bias?

• In fact, just 12% of course weeks (293 of 2,424) focused upon norms and values, with the percentage higher in elite programs and lower in other programs. 
• In the 293 norms and values course weeks, however, there was strong evidence of normative bias in the topic descriptions and assigned readings—with 190 course weeks identifiably left-leaning, 102 neutral, and one identifiably right-leaning.

What authors do students primarily read in the course of principal preparation? 

• The most commonly assigned authors included: Terence Deal, Kent Peterson, Allan Odden, Thomas Sergiovanni, Richard Elmore, and Michael Fullan. 
• Influential scholars of educational management, governance, or productivity largely absent from assigned reading included Paul Hill, Larry Cuban, William Boyd, Michael Kirst, and Jim Guthrie. 
• Of the 50 most influential living management thinkers, as determined by a 2003 survey of management professionals and scholars, just nine were assigned in the 210 courses. Their work was assigned a total of 29 times out of 1,851 readings.

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar at AEI and the director of education policy studies at AEI. Andrew P. Kelly is a research assistant at AEI.