Educational Leadership - History

History

The term school leadership came into currency in the late 20th century for several reasons. Demands were made on schools for higher levels of pupil achievement, and schools were expected to improve and reform. These expectations were accompanied by calls for accountability at the school level. Maintenance of the status quo was no longer considered acceptable. Administration and management are terms that connote stability through the exercise of control and supervision. The concept of leadership was favored because it conveys dynamism and pro-activity. The principal or school head is commonly thought to be the school leader; however, school leadership may include other persons, such as members of a formal leadership team and other persons who contribute toward the aims of the school.

While school leadership or educational leadership have become popular as replacements for educational administration in recent years, leadership arguably presents only a partial picture of the work of school, division or district, and ministerial or state education agency personnel, not to mention the areas of research explored by university faculty in departments concerned with the operations of schools and educational institutions. For this reason, there may be grounds to question the merits of the term as a catch-all for the field. Rather, the etiology of its use may be found in more generally and con-temporarily experienced neo-liberal social and economic governance models, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. On this view, the term is understood as having been borrowed from business.

In the United States, the superintendency, or role of the chief school administrator, has undergone many changes since the creation of the position which is often attributed to the Buffalo Common Council that approved a superintendent on June 9, 1837. If history serves us correctly, the superintendency is about 170 years old with four major role changes from the early 19th century through the first half of the 20th century and into the early years of the 21st century. Initially, the superintendent's main function was clerical in nature and focused on assisting the board of education with day-to-day details of running the school. At the turn of the 20th century, states began to develop common curriculum for public schools with superintendents fulfilling the role of teacher-scholar or master educator who had added an emphasis on curricular and instructional matters to school operations. In the early 20th century, the Industrial Revolution affected the superintendent's role by shifting the emphasis to expert manager with efficiency in handling non-instructional tasks such as budget, facility,and transportation. The release of A Nation at Risk in 1983 directly impacted public school accountability and, ultimately, the superintendency. The early 1980s initiated the change that has continued through today with the superintendent viewed as chief executive officer, including the roles of professional adviser to the board, leader of reforms, manager of resources and communicator to the public.