Leadership Standards

 

Welcome to Leadership Standards

Overview

Leadership standards establish and communicate expectations for the professional practice of school leaders. They create a shared language about school leadership and serve as the foundation for all principal preparation and school leadership development efforts.

In Utah, the Board has established expectations for effective leadership standards and district responsibilities for leadership standards. 

In addition, current research on leadership standards both supports and extends the expectations established by the Board.

Indicators of quality implementation of leadership standards from current research include:

  • Districts have adopted leadership standards.
  • District leadership standards include competencies that help identify the specific actions that effective school leaders engage in every day.
  • Districts use their leadership standards to inform district policies and practices across all principal pipeline domains.
  • Districts regularly review their standards and competencies as part of a process of continuous improvement.
  • Districts engage key stakeholders in the adoption, use, and review of their leadership standards and competencies.

Educational Leadership Standards

The Utah State Standards for Educational Leadership Standards were updated in 2018. The goal behind the revised standards was to better articulate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Utah educators need to develop as they prepare for and serve as school leaders. The standards are intended to be used as a tool to guide the ongoing and continuous professional development of principals. They are also a required component of a principal evaluation system.

The current Educational Leadership Standards can be found in R277-330.

Utah Educational Leadership Standards require administrators to:

Meet the Effective Teaching Standards- including having the knowledge and skills to guide and supervise the work of educators; leading the school learning community; and managing the school's learning environment in order to provide effective, high quality instruction to all Utah students. 

The standards then include the following 6 strands:

  1. Visionary Leadership-promoting the success of every student by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is largely shared and supported by stakeholders. 

  2. Teaching and Learning-promoting the success of every student by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school focused on teaching and learning conducive to student, faculty, and staff growth. 

  3. Management for Learning-promoting the success of every student by ensuring management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment. 

  4. Community Collaboration-promoting the success of every student by collaborating with faculty, staff, parents, and community members; responding to diverse community interests; and mobilizing community resources. 

  5. Ethical Leadership-promoting the success of every student by acting with, and ensuring a system of, integrity, fairness, equity, and ethical behavior. 

  6. Systems Leadership-promoting the success of every student by understanding, responding to, and influencing the interrelated systems of political, social, economic, legal, and policy contexts affecting education.

 

The Utah Leading through Effective, Actionable, and Dynamic Education (ULEAD) team has created a series of Leadership Toolkits to support the implementation of Utah Educational Leadership Standards. 

Strand 1: Visionary Leadership
Strand 2: Teaching and Learning
Strand 3: Management for Learning

 

Strand 4: Community Collaboration
Strand 5: Ethical Leadership
Strand 6: Systems Leadership

 

 

Research

Wallace Foundation

A series of reports on an effort to help school districts develop effective school leadership district wide. Leadership standards are highlighted throughout.

There’s no one recipe for improving state policy on school leadership, but a set of considerations about matters including potential policy levers can help policymakers. Leadership standards are one of the policy levers explored.

The impact of an effective principal is stronger and broader than previously thought, making it difficult to envision a higher return on investment in K-12 education than the cultivation of high-quality school leadership, according to this research synthesis. This report includes the identification of three skills and four behaviors of principals that are linked to benefits for students and schools.

This guide is designed to help school districts take stock of and improve their policies, processes and structures related to school leadership​.

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