UA plans principal program

Training aimed at needy schools

A $1.9 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation will establish a new yearlong program to train future principals to work in the state's high-need school districts, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the foundation announced Monday.

The Principal Fellows program follows the establishment last year of a training program at UA called Arkansas Teacher Corps. That program also receives financial support from the Walton Family Foundation, as well as other donors.

"That's a similar program in that we're trying to meet the needs of parts of the state that have a very difficult time finding quality education professionals," said Tom Smith, dean of UA's College of Education and Health Professions.

The new principal program aims to offer diverse internship experiences for aspiring administrators along with fulfilling certification requirements for principals imposed by the state, said John Pijanowski, professor of educational leadership in UA's College of Education and Health Professions.

"It's about having the time and the depth of the experience so that they're actually doing the real work of being a leader under the supervision of a highly trained and qualified mentor," Pijanowski said.

The grant provides funding for 60 future principals to go through the training over four years without having to pay for it, Pijanowski said. The university, after a year to plan the program, will have the first class of up to 20 fellows begin training next summer.

With working teachers offered opportunities through the effort, the program's schedule will make use of the summers to make it easier to schedule more full days of internship training, Pijanowski said.

Currently, public school teachers wanting to be principals often make do with internship experiences crammed into their daily class "prep" periods, Pijanowski said. This involves shadowing a leader in their district and doesn't expose future leaders to a diversity of leadership styles, he said.

The yearlong training will also feature an online learning component, Pijanowski said.

Details of how fellows will be selected and placed into schools and under what criteria are still being worked out, but fellows who sign up will have a "hard commitment" after completion of the training, Pijanowski said.

"We want them to have a commitment once they complete the program to working in communities that are high-need communities -- and not only working there, but building a career there," Pijanowski said.

He said that "this is not a program where we're trying to take people from urban areas or places from out of state and get them to move into rural Arkansas." Instead, "we're just trying to help rural Arkansas grow their own, develop their own pipeline of leadership," Pijanowski said.

Pijanowski also emphasized that "this is not in any way an alternative program." Rather, "we see this as an evolution of how the training of school leaders will happen moving forward," he said.

Jerri Derlikowski, director of education policy for the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said state-funded efforts to improve training for "master" principals have helped -- but those who complete the training haven't ended up in high-need districts.

"We're very excited to see a new idea in bringing some expertise into low-income, poor school districts," Derlikowski said.

In the Dollarway School District, where 94 percent of students were classified as low-income by the state for the 2012-13 school year, the most recent year with data available, Superintendent Bobby Acklin said he wasn't familiar with the new program.

"High school principals are difficult" to find, Acklin said, though he added, "you can find elementary school principals fairly easy, in my opinion."

He added: "But you want the best that's out there, regardless of what program they come from."

NW News on 06/24/2014

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