Frederick Hess and Andrew Kelly, The Abell Report
January 2004
This brief report by Frederick M. Hess and Andrew Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute addresses a familiar topic: the "man-made shortage of individuals with the skills, training, knowledge, and desire to lead modern schools and school systems." The authors confront current methods of recruiting and hiring public school principals and superintendents, stating that the "problem is that these licensure rules constrain the pool of potential applicants when there is no evidence that they produce more effective school managers." In May 2003 the Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued its own report, Better Leaders for America's Schools: A Manifesto (see http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=1) that offered potential remedies to this problem. The Hess-Kelly piece cites examples of successful school leaders who did not come through the traditional educational frameworks, and brought with them expertise from different fields, which could be especially useful in an "era of heightened accountability, tight budgets, and rapid technological innovation." This report makes straightforward suggestions about how to recruit and hire successful school leaders; encouraging a "simpler, more straightforward standard for hiring principals," perhaps using a focused test that could replace some of the current restrictive requirements for new hires. To read the report for yourself, visit, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040128_arn104.pdf.
