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The Academic Robustness and Practical Relevance of Educational Leadership Programs: The Continuing Controversy between Research and Practice
Posted on 2006/05/08
Graduate Educational Leadership programs in the United States are suspect in terms of their general quality and relevance, and have been so for the past two decades. The multidimensional research study entitled Educating School Leaders, under the supervision of Arthur Levine, President of Teachers College, Columbia University, published in March of 2005, arguably presents the most scathing and research-informed critique of these programs, and even recommends elimination of the Doctor of Education (Ed.D) in favor of a terminal Master of Educational Administration degree. Levine’s study included nationwide surveys of deans, chairs, and directors of education schools, as well as of faculty and alumni of education school programs, and of school principals. The Deans Survey was sent to the total population of education schools (500) and received a 53% response rate; the other surveys—applying the technique of stratified random sampling—also had high response rates (40%, 34%, and 41%, respectively). In general, the findings of the 87-page report were:
“very disappointing. Collectively, educational administration programs are the weakest of all the programs at the nation’s education schools...We managed to locate only a small number of strong programs in the United States. None was considered exemplary.”
Levine, 2005, 13-14
It gets worse.
“The study found the overall quality of educational administration programs in the United States to be poor. The majority of programs range from inadequate to appalling, even at some of the country’s leading universities. Collectively, school leadership programs are not successful on any of the nine quality criteria presented [earlier].”
Levine, 2005, 23
Students in educational leadership can attain master’s degrees and doctorates, either the Ed.D or Ph.D. The Ed.D appears to be neither fish nor fowl—generally perceived as a "watering down" of the Ph.D. that neither satisfies the practitioner demands nor those of the researcher. The study pinpointed the fact that educational leadership programs in general do not adhere to the professional standards of other education programs and, more specifically, to those of other doctoral-granting disciplines, in preparing their graduates in substantive research methodology or to conduct research that will contribute to the discipline’s knowledge base:
“Educational administration scholarship is atheoretical and immature; it neglects to ask important questions; it is overwhelmingly engaged in non-empirical research; and it is disconnected from practice.”
Levine, 2005, 44
Faculty within the programs projects this same image. Levine (p. 45) cites a study by Murphy and Vriesenga (2004) that found that of the more than 2,000 articles written in leading educational administration journals from 1975 to 2002, “only 3 percent were empirical studies.”
Nevertheless, despite calls for the elimination of doctorates and programs (Levine, for example, cites on page 18 that Leaders for America’s Schools, the study published in 1987, recommended that over 300 of the country’s 505 graduate educational administration programs “should be closed”), the programs continue to proliferate—and, according to many respondents to Levine’s surveys—for all the wrong reasons, the most prevalent being their status as “cash cows,” that is, low-cost, high return programs, that enable funds to be transferred to other parts of the college or university. Other associated elements of the profile include low-to-non-existent admissions criteria, high percentage of adjunct faculty, underqualified full time faculty (in terms of quality of scholarship engagement and production, and in preparation for teaching particular courses), the “watering down” of programs, and the promotion of “quickie” degrees (Levine, p. 24).
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is self-described in the following way:
“With over 780 institutional members, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education brings the power of collective voice to national and state arenas on the complex and critical mission of preparing high-quality teachers capable of having an impact on the learning of all PK-12 students.”
http://www.aacte.org/ retrieved 7 May 2006
The response to Levine’s comprehensive research by the president and CEO of the (AACTE, David G. Imig, was quick and dismissive, and extolled the application of fundamental elements of capitalism, and, by implication, the commodification of education:
“What can be intuited from [Levine’s] report is that competition, marketing, and an emphasis upon practicality and local need are not the answer to refashioning school leadership preparation. We think otherwise. Let competition and the free market work; help local school districts and school boards raise their expectations and standards, and higher education based preparation programs will respond.”
AACTE, Statement of AACTE President & CEO http://www.aacte.org/News/Press_Room/pr031405.pdf
March 14, 2005
Thus, Mr. Imig, speaking for AACTE, apparently takes the position that our educational leadership programs (and teacher education programs in general) are to be designed according to the market demand, and that lobbyists are necessary to change the admittedly low state of demand regarding expectations and standards putatively held by school districts and boards. One wonders what level of expectations and standards parents and corporations and other entities hold according to Mr. Imig, and what degree of responsiveness an educational institution or set of such organizations, and advocacy agencies such as AACTE, should take to heighten expectations and standards in light of those multiple and paramount perspectives. In any case, justifying the low quality of teacher education programs by citing that they “are responsive to the needs of local schools” (AACTE, March 1, 2005, p1) appears more in keeping with a reactionary or status quo position than one of innovation or change.
Thus, in the face of the research-based dismal assessments by a substantive number of the administrators and faculty responsible for the quality of educational leadership programs across the nation, and the obvious need for substantive changes in the quality of our nation’s preK-12 schooling outcomes, once again—in the public educational chess game—a stalemate has been declared between research and practice. Perhaps we need a new metaphor, one that emphasizes the exercise of a set of skills to realize a positive, intended effect with lasting appeal. One that prizes cooperation, persistence, refinement, talent, creativity, and strength. Research and practice must dance together as partners, as a team, rather than compete against one another. In a ballet everyone wins.
Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and various colleagues of his at Carnegie, called for a different type of doctorate—suggesting Professional Practice Doctorate (P.P.D.)—for leaders in schools and teacher educators, and reserving the PhD for those who are actually planning to conduct research and perhaps enter the academy. There might be a series of assessments rather than a dissertation. Nevertheless, Shulman et al.:
“would expect, for example, an accomplished P.P.D. to be able to read, VERY critically and analytically, research reports claiming to offer evidence that people should teacher in certain ways, organize schools in certain ways, or redo the economics of school districts and states in certain ways[;] to have the skills and experience necessary to evaluate such reports or to know when he or she needs more specialized knowledge to be able to evaluate them[;] to make practice and policy decisions[; to] be skilled in carrying out local research and evaluations to guide practice.”
L. S. Shulman, C. M. Golde, A. Conklin Bueschel, & K. J. Garabedian
“Reclaiming Education’s Doctorates: A Critique and a Proposal”
Research News and Comment section, Educational Researcher
April 2006, p. 29
Original emphasis
Thus, in Shulman et al.’s model, practice cannot be honed at the expense of research, or--and this is odd that Shulman, or anyone, would state the following as a criterion at the doctorate level of study or any level of study beginning with middle school--that the P.P.D. graduate would have to read critically—and that Shulman would feel required to emphasize this criterion through the use of italics and a superfluous adverb(the word "very" in capitals in this posting). Also odd is that part of their model that appears to fly in the face of knowledge held regarding the profile of educational leadership graduate students—namely, that they work first, and study second, and that they pursue graduate, including doctoral work, for salary hurdle and promotional purposes. Nevertheless, Shulman et al. blithely state (p. 29) that:
“People would be asked to give up only one year of work for full-time study—a capstone year with a definitive end.”
The model, richly deserving of attention, and aiming to satisfy the concerns of quality and relevance of graduate work in educational leadership, seems not to address the practice-research dichotomy—were it easily dismissed as false! Nor does the model address the free market economics characterizing “PhD-lite” educational leadership programs, leading respondents to state, as did one dissertation adviser regarding the quality of students’ dissertations (Levine, 2005, p.43):
“For the most part, you hold your nose and pass the student.”
Thus we, as educators, as community members, as cultural beings concerned with, and purportedly engaged in, the effective socialization of this and succeeding generations, are in the midst of a puzzle the solution of which seems far from our collective grasp. I propose that our actions should neither consist of holding our nose nor our breath. Education, at every level, is about learning how to learn, learning, applying what one has learned, sharing learning, and ultimately creating knowledge--for the common good. The university setting is supposedly the greatest collective repository and generator of knowledge and questions, and seeks to consistently disseminate new knowledge. Research literacy and generation are the sine qua non of scholarship, and graduate programs are the essence of generating and sharing scholarship. Educational leadership programs offering graduate degrees—particularly doctorates—sans research literacy or tools to generate research are questionable as scholarly or culturally relevant enterprises, although they may certainly be, in the short term, profitable and popular.
“very disappointing. Collectively, educational administration programs are the weakest of all the programs at the nation’s education schools...We managed to locate only a small number of strong programs in the United States. None was considered exemplary.”
Levine, 2005, 13-14
It gets worse.
“The study found the overall quality of educational administration programs in the United States to be poor. The majority of programs range from inadequate to appalling, even at some of the country’s leading universities. Collectively, school leadership programs are not successful on any of the nine quality criteria presented [earlier].”
Levine, 2005, 23
Students in educational leadership can attain master’s degrees and doctorates, either the Ed.D or Ph.D. The Ed.D appears to be neither fish nor fowl—generally perceived as a "watering down" of the Ph.D. that neither satisfies the practitioner demands nor those of the researcher. The study pinpointed the fact that educational leadership programs in general do not adhere to the professional standards of other education programs and, more specifically, to those of other doctoral-granting disciplines, in preparing their graduates in substantive research methodology or to conduct research that will contribute to the discipline’s knowledge base:
“Educational administration scholarship is atheoretical and immature; it neglects to ask important questions; it is overwhelmingly engaged in non-empirical research; and it is disconnected from practice.”
Levine, 2005, 44
Faculty within the programs projects this same image. Levine (p. 45) cites a study by Murphy and Vriesenga (2004) that found that of the more than 2,000 articles written in leading educational administration journals from 1975 to 2002, “only 3 percent were empirical studies.”
Nevertheless, despite calls for the elimination of doctorates and programs (Levine, for example, cites on page 18 that Leaders for America’s Schools, the study published in 1987, recommended that over 300 of the country’s 505 graduate educational administration programs “should be closed”), the programs continue to proliferate—and, according to many respondents to Levine’s surveys—for all the wrong reasons, the most prevalent being their status as “cash cows,” that is, low-cost, high return programs, that enable funds to be transferred to other parts of the college or university. Other associated elements of the profile include low-to-non-existent admissions criteria, high percentage of adjunct faculty, underqualified full time faculty (in terms of quality of scholarship engagement and production, and in preparation for teaching particular courses), the “watering down” of programs, and the promotion of “quickie” degrees (Levine, p. 24).
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is self-described in the following way:
“With over 780 institutional members, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education brings the power of collective voice to national and state arenas on the complex and critical mission of preparing high-quality teachers capable of having an impact on the learning of all PK-12 students.”
http://www.aacte.org/ retrieved 7 May 2006
The response to Levine’s comprehensive research by the president and CEO of the (AACTE, David G. Imig, was quick and dismissive, and extolled the application of fundamental elements of capitalism, and, by implication, the commodification of education:
“What can be intuited from [Levine’s] report is that competition, marketing, and an emphasis upon practicality and local need are not the answer to refashioning school leadership preparation. We think otherwise. Let competition and the free market work; help local school districts and school boards raise their expectations and standards, and higher education based preparation programs will respond.”
AACTE, Statement of AACTE President & CEO http://www.aacte.org/News/Press_Room/pr031405.pdf
March 14, 2005
Thus, Mr. Imig, speaking for AACTE, apparently takes the position that our educational leadership programs (and teacher education programs in general) are to be designed according to the market demand, and that lobbyists are necessary to change the admittedly low state of demand regarding expectations and standards putatively held by school districts and boards. One wonders what level of expectations and standards parents and corporations and other entities hold according to Mr. Imig, and what degree of responsiveness an educational institution or set of such organizations, and advocacy agencies such as AACTE, should take to heighten expectations and standards in light of those multiple and paramount perspectives. In any case, justifying the low quality of teacher education programs by citing that they “are responsive to the needs of local schools” (AACTE, March 1, 2005, p1) appears more in keeping with a reactionary or status quo position than one of innovation or change.
Thus, in the face of the research-based dismal assessments by a substantive number of the administrators and faculty responsible for the quality of educational leadership programs across the nation, and the obvious need for substantive changes in the quality of our nation’s preK-12 schooling outcomes, once again—in the public educational chess game—a stalemate has been declared between research and practice. Perhaps we need a new metaphor, one that emphasizes the exercise of a set of skills to realize a positive, intended effect with lasting appeal. One that prizes cooperation, persistence, refinement, talent, creativity, and strength. Research and practice must dance together as partners, as a team, rather than compete against one another. In a ballet everyone wins.
Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and various colleagues of his at Carnegie, called for a different type of doctorate—suggesting Professional Practice Doctorate (P.P.D.)—for leaders in schools and teacher educators, and reserving the PhD for those who are actually planning to conduct research and perhaps enter the academy. There might be a series of assessments rather than a dissertation. Nevertheless, Shulman et al.:
“would expect, for example, an accomplished P.P.D. to be able to read, VERY critically and analytically, research reports claiming to offer evidence that people should teacher in certain ways, organize schools in certain ways, or redo the economics of school districts and states in certain ways[;] to have the skills and experience necessary to evaluate such reports or to know when he or she needs more specialized knowledge to be able to evaluate them[;] to make practice and policy decisions[; to] be skilled in carrying out local research and evaluations to guide practice.”
L. S. Shulman, C. M. Golde, A. Conklin Bueschel, & K. J. Garabedian
“Reclaiming Education’s Doctorates: A Critique and a Proposal”
Research News and Comment section, Educational Researcher
April 2006, p. 29
Original emphasis
Thus, in Shulman et al.’s model, practice cannot be honed at the expense of research, or--and this is odd that Shulman, or anyone, would state the following as a criterion at the doctorate level of study or any level of study beginning with middle school--that the P.P.D. graduate would have to read critically—and that Shulman would feel required to emphasize this criterion through the use of italics and a superfluous adverb(the word "very" in capitals in this posting). Also odd is that part of their model that appears to fly in the face of knowledge held regarding the profile of educational leadership graduate students—namely, that they work first, and study second, and that they pursue graduate, including doctoral work, for salary hurdle and promotional purposes. Nevertheless, Shulman et al. blithely state (p. 29) that:
“People would be asked to give up only one year of work for full-time study—a capstone year with a definitive end.”
The model, richly deserving of attention, and aiming to satisfy the concerns of quality and relevance of graduate work in educational leadership, seems not to address the practice-research dichotomy—were it easily dismissed as false! Nor does the model address the free market economics characterizing “PhD-lite” educational leadership programs, leading respondents to state, as did one dissertation adviser regarding the quality of students’ dissertations (Levine, 2005, p.43):
“For the most part, you hold your nose and pass the student.”
Thus we, as educators, as community members, as cultural beings concerned with, and purportedly engaged in, the effective socialization of this and succeeding generations, are in the midst of a puzzle the solution of which seems far from our collective grasp. I propose that our actions should neither consist of holding our nose nor our breath. Education, at every level, is about learning how to learn, learning, applying what one has learned, sharing learning, and ultimately creating knowledge--for the common good. The university setting is supposedly the greatest collective repository and generator of knowledge and questions, and seeks to consistently disseminate new knowledge. Research literacy and generation are the sine qua non of scholarship, and graduate programs are the essence of generating and sharing scholarship. Educational leadership programs offering graduate degrees—particularly doctorates—sans research literacy or tools to generate research are questionable as scholarly or culturally relevant enterprises, although they may certainly be, in the short term, profitable and popular.
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