Ready to Lead: Creating a Pathway that Ensures Readiness

Abstract

Great schools are created and thrive as a result of great leadership. Great school leaders are prepared in carefully designed preparation programs. Carefully crafted school leadership programs prepare leaders who are ready to lead. What is it that must be taught and learned in order to prepare leaders who are ready to lead? It is certain that school leadership must be clearly articulated, taught, and measured. With research clearly highlighting the impact of school leaders on school success, preparation programs have the responsibility to prepare new leaders to be skilled in leadership (Seashore Louis et al., 2010). It was with this in mind that the development of the Charter and Autonomous Leadership Academy (CASLA) program was created. CASLA was specifically built for an underserved population of administrators and future leaders in the charter world. By delivering the program using a hybrid format, cultivating a strong community component, and implementing a field-based project requiring students to use all that they learn in the program, CASLA is creating a pathway that ensures competency in all aspects of leadership, not just management (Issa Lahera & Normore, 2012). Crafting a relevant, rigorous, and thorough program proved to be a heroes journey. This chapter will provide an overview of CASLA: the leadership preparation program that claims to graduate leaders who are “Ready to Lead.”

Citation

Issa Lahera, A., Holzman, S. and Robinson, P. (2014), "Ready to Lead: Creating a Pathway that Ensures Readiness", Pathways to Excellence: Developing and Cultivating Leaders for the Classroom and Beyond (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-137. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-366020140000021017