Haslam announces plan to transform principal leadership
Tuesday, March 20, 2018 2:17 pm NASHVILLE - Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Education Commissioner Candice McQueen today announced a comprehensive initiative to transform the leadership of Tennessee's schools by improving the preparation, retention, and development of school principals. In conjunction with the State Board of Education, the Tennessee Department of Education is revising policy to ensure that the 19 traditional preparation programs within many of the state's higher education institutions are held accountable for the performance of their graduates. To accelerate performance, this effort will provide funding for 50 fellowship positions to support high-quality preparation programs and 50 district partnership grants for leadership development. • Recruitment and retention of turnaround school leaders In addition to training new leaders to fill the annual estimated 270 school leader vacancies, this effort will leverage the talents of top principals by incentivizing them to lead the state's lowest-performing schools. • Development opportunities for rural school leaders Principals in rural schools are often unable to take advantage of leadership development due to the cost of registration and travel and have few networking opportunities to learn from other school leaders. This program creates a professional network for 50 rural principals and scholarships for rural principals to attend state-led conferences and training opportunities.
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