ISLLC revisions

Forty-one states use the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards for School Leaders as the model for their administrator certification and preparation programs. The ISLLC standards currently are under revision and input is being solicited regarding needed modifications. Here is the note I sent Dr. Nona Prestine about ISLLC:

As Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), I would like to see ISLLC better reflect the technology leadership-related needs of school administrators. All sectors of society are being radically and rapidly transformed as a result of digital information and communication technologies. Although K-12 schools are moving more slowly on this front than other societal sectors, nonetheless I think that any standards document that is meant to guide administrative preparation and practice for the next decade or so must explicitly recognize the unique leadership challenges and considerations related to digital technologies.

When I say there needs to be a greater and explicit focus on technology leadership, I’m not talking about skills training (e.g., how to use PowerPoint or a PDA). I’m talking about the leadership necessary to facilitate effective and appropriate technology usage by teachers and students; efficiently utilize administrative technology systems to run the organization, communicate with stakeholders, and organize data; understand important legal, ethical, and policy issues; adequately support employee technology usage; and so on. In short, the leadership skills necessary to create schools that are adequately preparing students to live in what we know will be a technology-suffused, globally-interconnected world.

If you have some thoughts or beliefs about what administrative standards ought to look like for the next decade or two, I strongly suggest that you send Dr. Prestine a note of your own. Feel free to cc me – mcleod@umn.edu – I’d love to see what you say!