UCLA, Cal to Train Teachers as Principals for Lagging Schools

The University of California on Thursday announced it will open Principal Leadership Institutes at UC Berkeley and UCLA next summer to turn schoolteachers and administrators into principals who can help push reforms in poorly performing public schools.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson said that as many as 400 working educators will get full scholarships to enroll in the 15-month master’s degree program on the condition that each one of them commits to spending the next four years in a hard-to-staff public school.

“We will be looking for people who have experience in urban schools and a commitment to stay in urban schools,” said Aimee Dorr, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The new programs will be UC’s first degree program designed to help educators get a principal’s credential--long the domain of the California State University campuses and private universities such as USC.

UC’s Principal Leadership Institutes were inspired by Gov. Gray Davis. He provided UC officials with $500,000 in state funds this year to develop the institutes as part of his plan to get the University of California more involved in training schoolteachers and administrators.

Of all the things that make schools effective, said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl, “the keystone is the principal, who must recruit teachers, create a climate conducive to education and support teachers.”

Albert Carnesale, chancellor of UCLA, said the institutes can make a difference by training principals how to manage people and the curriculum and how to be better prepared for the political, legal and cultural challenges facing low-performing urban schools.

As such, the institutes will offer a multidisciplinary education, drawing on professors from the schools of education, law, public policy and business administration. The master’s program will be spread over two intensive summer sessions and include weekly classes during the regular school year. The institutes will also provide continuing education for newly minted principals as they settle into their roles.

Atkinson said he plans to send letters to school superintendents next week, asking them to nominate their “best and brightest teachers” for the Principal Leadership Institutes. He said UC will provide up to $2 million--raised mostly from private donations--in scholarships to cover graduate student fees.

The first class of aspiring principals will enroll next summer.

Robert Collins, assistant superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that 39% of principals in Los Angeles are now at retirement age and 69% will reach retirement within five years.

“Is there a need?” Collins said. “Absolutely.”

Although the institutes will train teachers to become principals primarily in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, UC officials hope the program will spread to UC’s other campuses in the state.