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The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers, was formed for the purpose of developing model standards and assessments for school leaders. ISLLC's primary constituency is the state education agencies responsible for administrator licensing. It includes representatives of state agencies/departments of education and professional standards boards, with considerable participation by professional associates.
In addition to raising quality within the profession, it is the hope of the Consortium that the development of model standards will promote action on two fronts. First, ISLLC member states believe that the standards will provide useful information for decision making within each state on a wide array of topics, such as program development and review, licensure, and advanced certification. Second, Consortium members expect that the creation of common standards will promote collaboration among the states, either collectively or in smaller groupings, on topics of mutual interest, such as reciprocity of licensure and candidate assessment.
Background
of the Assessment
Six of the ISLLC states joined together to fund the development of an innovative performance assessment designed for licensure of school principals. The District of Columbia, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and North Carolina all contributed funds to this effort. Educational Testing Service (ETS), the development contractor, also contributed funds. Delegates from these states sat on the ISLLC Development Team. The Development Team met periodically throughout the assessment development process to oversee and discuss the work, which was managed by Educational Testing Service.
The ISLLC Standards
The content of the assessment is based on the standards developed by ISLLC members and on a national job analysis. The standards are based on
- a thorough analysis of what is known about effective educational leadership at the school and district levels
- a comprehensive examination of the best thinking about the types of leadership that will be required for tomorrow's schools
- syntheses of the thoughtful work on administrator standards developed by various national organizations, professional associations, and reform commissions
- in-depth discussions of leadership and administrative standards by leaders within each of the 24 states involved in the ISLLC
The standards are designed to capture what is essential about the role of school leaders -- what makes a difference in whether a school community can provide experiences that ensure all students succeed. The standards capture what research and practitioners have told the ISLLC representatives are critical components of effective leadership. By focusing on the essential aspects of leadership -- defined in relation to student success -- the standards are designed to help transform the profession of educational administration and the roles of school administrators.
Many of the states involved in the development of the School Leaders Licensure Assessment had previously developed state-specific administrator standards. To craft material for a common assessment, these individual sets of indicators were blended into the six ISLLC Standards.
ISLLC Standards Summary
Summary statements for the six ISLLC Standards are presented below. All candidates are advised to give special attention to these standards because responses to each question in the assessment will be judged using rubrics based on the standards.
Note that each standard starts with the same phrase: "A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by. . . " This phrase highlights the standards' emphasis on the vision of a school leader as an educational leader who strives to promote the success of all students.
Standard 1
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community.
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Standard 4
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources.
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Standard 2
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth.
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Standard 5
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner.
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Standard 3
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment.
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Standard 6
A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
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The full standards are defined by a combination of knowledge, disposition, and performance indicators. Copies of the complete standards can be ordered from:
Council of Chief State School Officers
Attn: Publications
One Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20001-1431
Phone: 202-336-7016
Alternatively, you can view the complete standards on the Internet at http://www.ccsso.org/standrds.html
The Job Analysis
One of the first steps toward building a valid licensure test is to conduct a job analysis; in which descriptive information is obtained about job tasks and/or the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform those tasks. A job analysis supports the validity of a licensure test by linking the content of the test directly to the job.
A common approach to job analysis is to (1) define a content domain using the pooled judgments of an advisory committee of subject-matter experts, and (2) conduct a survey of the professionals in the field to verify the judgments of the advisory committee. Such an approach was used in the development of the licensure assessment for school leaders. A committee of 14 subject-matter experts defined a domain of responsibilities and knowledge areas they felt were important for all beginning school administrators. This committee was diverse with respect to school level (elementary, middle, high), gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic region (including nine representatives from the funding states).
This domain of responsibilities and knowledge areas was then mailed to a national sample of more than 10,000 school principals, who represented different school levels and settings (urban, suburban, and rural). Market Data Retrieval, a recognized leader in the field of education database management, conducted the sampling. On average, 750 school principals were sampled from each of the initial funding states, compared with 150 from each of the other states in the United States.
The school principals were asked to judge the importance of the responsibilities and knowledge areas (using a five-point rating scale) in relation to the competent performance of a beginning school principal. Survey results indicate that principals judged the majority of responsibility statements (97 percent) and knowledge areas (95 percent) to be important (a mean importance rating of 3.50 or greater).
The Nature of Licensure Assessment
What is it?
The purpose of licensure is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. A license granted to an individual signifies that the person has the knowledge and skills required to carry out important occupational responsibilities competently. A licensure test is designed to determine whether individuals possess occupation-relevant knowledge and skills at the time of entry into their occupation or profession. In short, a licensure test may be viewed as a safeguard for the public a mechanism that helps ensure that only individuals who possess important knowledge and skills enter into professional practice.
What makes a licensure assessment valid?
Validity, in general, refers to the appropriateness and meaningfulness of the conclusions that someone draws based on test scores. Validity addresses the basic question, "Is it reasonable for me to make specific inferences about a candidate's level of knowledge and skill, for example, based upon his or her test scores?" Evidence in support of validity comes in many related forms; however, for purposes of licensure testing, the most common form is referred to as content- oriented validity.
Content-oriented validity refers to the extent to which the content of the licensure test reflects important occupational requirements, such as responsibilities, knowledge, and skills. If there is a clear linkage between the content of the licensure test and the occupation, there is evidence ofcontent-oriented validity. Content-oriented validity is based on the expert judgment of individuals who are highly familiar with the occupation for example, practitioners, supervisors, and educators of practitioners.
Assessment Development
The ETS development strategy for the initial forms of the assessment was to draft exercises and then immediately submit them for tryout and review by a group of local principals. After this initial tryout, the exercises were revised and then sent to practitioners in the funding states for tryout, as well as to the ISLLC Development Team for review. In this way, each exercise was seen and tried out by a minimum of six to eight practitioners before it was ever pilot tested. Prior to their use as licensure assessments, complete forms were administered to a pilot test group similar in background and educational preparation to actual potential candidates.
With this development template in place, ETS will develop subsequent assessment forms with a team of eight principals. As the team develops new exercises, they will be reviewed by a committee of eight principals who were selected for their knowledge of the profession and diversity with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, and type of school background. The review committee will ascertain the appropriateness, relevance, and utility of the new exercises, and will recommend revisions accordingly. In this way, subsequent forms of the assessment will be developed, reviewed, and revised by experienced principals.
Site owned, designed, produced , and maintained by the Missouri Professors of Education Administration. James E. Walter, Webmaster (February, 2003)
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