The Leadership Mismatch: An Alternative View - removing barriers to women's access to positions in school administration

School Administrator, Nov, 2001 by Marilyn Tallerico, Suzanne Tingley

The declining interest of candidates in administration could be reversed by removing barriers for women

Concerted efforts to cultivate women's roles in educational leadership have been markedly absent in discussions about leadership preparation and administrator supply and demand.

These are serious omissions given that gender imbalance in K-12 public school leadership has been evident for a long time and most graduate students earning administrative credentials today are women. In addition, institutionalized obstacles limit women's entry and advancement in school administration.

These are times of considerable hand-wringing about the quality and quantity of applicants for current and predicted administrative vacancies in the public schools. We believe a solution to the supply-and-demand mismatch is in hand.

We take an alternative view of the administrator shortage that plagues some districts and states. In fact, we argue that prospective leaders already exist in the educational system and the only thing needed is to remove the obstacles in the paths of these emerging leaders. In short, women educators can be a key to resolving the declining supply of administrative candidates, but only if certain policies and practices are improved.

Breaking Barriers

What specific actions can be taken to remove obstacles that prevent public schools from benefiting from the existing female talent? What changes can be made to the system so that qualified women have access to administrative positions? We offer five recommendations.

* Recommendation No. 1: Examine the discriminatory consequences of recent state policy directions for administrative certification.

Some states are opening doors to prospective educational leaders without previous professional experience in the schools. Sometimes this involves developing or changing state policies to promote fast-track routes to administrative certification. Other times it means waiving existing policies requiring teaching experience or educational administrative certification for particular hiring situations.

For example, The School Administrator reported in June that 28 such nontraditional superintendents are serving or have served America's school districts since 1988. These include former businessmen, former military officers, former attorneys and individuals with a wide variety of other government, corporate and executive backgrounds.

At the same time that some states are lowering the bar for noneducators' entry into school administration, many states are also considering or implementing increasingly rigorous standards for the acquisition of administrative certification by experienced educators. While the first approach has the potential to increase future administrator supply, the second can exacerbate supply problems.

Moreover, this combination of policies can have unfair consequences by gender. How so? Because business, military and government leaders are predominantly male, while teachers and students in graduate leadership programs are predominantly female. Thus, this two-pronged approach to administrator certification policy results in facilitating the access of males while limiting the access of females. Regardless of intent, policies that favor one sex over another not only perpetuate longstanding gender imbalances in educational leadership, they also are discriminatory.

* Recommendation No. 2: Initiate policies that facilitate teachers' entry into administrative leadership.

To counterbalance the male-biased certification policies, acting affirmatively to support the leadership talent that exists within the teaching pool can be accomplished in various ways. With state funding, districts can offer incentives to prospective leaders, such as:

* Paid internships allowing teachers to support themselves and their families during a year of administrative apprenticeship;

* Sabbaticals and scholarships for educators completing leadership preparation degree programs;

* Loan forgiveness for administrative coursework, similar to opportunities offered to entice teachers to the most difficult assignments; and

* Cost-sharing collaborative arrangements with regional or county educational service providers to enable teachers with administrative potential to acquire internships and other leadership experiences beyond their own classrooms.

Precedents exist for state financial support to improve teaching or to encourage teachers to obtain certification in areas of shortage. For example, state funds have supported teacher mentoring initiatives, special education leadership development and certification of bilingual teachers. Funding to support emerging school leadership would be a similar investment in the future of our children.

Why are such supports needed at this time? And what does gender have to do with it? We know that a number of unnecessary bottlenecks occur at the entry gates of the potential administrator pipeline. For example, the costs of graduate study and the scarcity of quality administrative internships can limit educators' acquisition of administrative leadership experience and credentials. Several universities and professional organizations provide competitive scholarships and awards for graduate leadership study. But compared to the numbers of students enrolled in leadership preparation programs and the number of administrative vacancies needing to be filled, these supports benefit relatively few prospective administrators.