A new article recently published in the Journal of Catholic Education provides insight on what it takes to successfully lead schools.
The article’s authors are Michael Boyle of the Andrew M. Greeley Center for Catholic Education, School of Education-Loyola University Chicago, and Alicia Haller and Erika Hunt both from the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University.
The article, The Leadership Challenge: Preparing and Developing Catholic School Principles, discusses how the increasing emphasis on the myriad of leadership preparation standards have caused university principal preparation programs to necessarily focus on the more secular aspect of leading schools. For the Catholic school principal, this has left little focus on the development of critical strategies to lead for Catholic identity and faith formation.
This article suggests using the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Schools as a framework for Catholic principal preparation programs to address this issues. Additional suggestions for program development are also offered.
