Billionaire businessman Eli Broad, one of the country's most active philanthropists, founded the "Broad Superintendents Academy" in 2002 with an extraordinarily optimistic goal: Find leaders from both inside and outside education, train them, and have them occupying the superintendencies in a third of the 75 largest school districts--all in just…

It is widely accepted that principals are vital to school success, but few studies have closely examined how to train effective school leaders. Now, a report has identified the common features of exemplary programs for preparing principals who can guide instruction and foster school improvement. The study examined eight programs, chosen on the…

For decades, preservice training for principals looked something like this: While working as teachers, they took occasional courses at an education school on such topics as school finance, law, and educational theory. After a few years, they completed a culminating field assignment, which might have involved shadowing their own principals. Then…

New York City is far from alone in embracing the concept of smaller, more personalized high schools committed to challenging academic standards for all students. Thanks in part to an outpouring of philanthropic and federal funding, school districts across the country are opening new small high schools and breaking down existing ones into smaller…

Steeped in a distinctive view of leadership, graduates of the Broad Superintendents Academy have landed some of public education's top jobs. In this article, the author features the Broad Superintendents Academy, a program established by Eli Broad's Foundation which spends roughly $45,000 to train each of the business executives, military…

A far-reaching study offers a damning assessment of the programs that prepare most of the nation's principals and superintendents. Led by Arthur E. Levine, the president of Teachers College, Columbia University, the report says most university-based preparation programs for administrators range in quality from "inadequate to appalling." The…

Lots of districts like to think they have close-knit leadership teams. But few school leaders can say they've ironed their clothes together, which became a morning ritual for a group from San Francisco that spent a week at the Harvard Business School in Boston. Joined by similar teams from seven other large districts, they camped out in dorm-like…