The Urban Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1991

Editor's Introduction

The reform of schools, currently referred to as school restructuring, con- tinues to enjoy the attention of a variety of professional and lay groups. Legis- lators continue to enact reform legislation, large school districts such as Chi- cago continue to wrestle with the implementation of reforms designed to devolve power from the central office to individual schools, and the profes- sional literature continues to burst with analyses of and prescriptions for school reform (e.g., Goodlad, 1990).

Predictably, the focus of this reform activity has shifted several times since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. Reform began as an effort to tighten up what schools did--e .g. , develop the "new basics" in curriculum, lengthen the school day and year, and assign more homework. The next con- cern focused on preparing teachers in different ways to ensure their compe- t ence - e . g . , A Nation Prepared (1986) and Tomorrow's Teachers (1986). The most recent concern has focused on the preparation of principals, and especially on their ability to lead school reform--e.g. , Improving the Preparation of School Administrators: An Agenda for Reform (1989).

While it should be clear that school reform requires us to address all three of these domains together, effective schools being essentially unobtainable if we ignore one or more of the domains, the level of discourse concerning reform has largely remained atheoretical. This issue of The Urban Review is important because it addresses several key issues concerning the preparation of school administrators. Perhaps most importantly, it addresses fundamental questions about our conception of administrator preparation and the kinds of schools which these newly prepared administrators must help create and sustain.

The lead paper, by Quantz, Cambron-McCabe, and Dantley, presents the rationale and content for a new program to prepare administrators to be offered by the Department of Educational Leadership of Miami University. The next three papers, by Apple, Johnston, and Sergiovanni, are reactions to the Miami program. In the final paper, Quantz and Cambron-McCabe respond to the com- ments of Apple, Johnson, and Sergiovanni.

This dialogue, we believe, is important to the development of creative and skilled administrators. The Urban Review is happy to feature such an exchange. Quantz, Cambron-McCabe, and Dantley are to be commended for so readily

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accepting the request that their new program be reviewed in this public forum. It is our intent to stimulate both discussion about and experimentation with new conceptions of administrator preparation. Thus, we welcome reader reactions to the ideas presented in this special issue.

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REFERENCES

Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. (1986). A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century. New York: Carnegie Corporation.

Goodlad, J. I. (1990). Teachers for Our Nation's Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. The Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow's Teachers. East Lansing, MI: Author. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A Nation at Risk. Washington, DC:

Government Printing Office. The National Policy Board for Educational Administration. (1989). Improving the Preparation of

School Administrators: An Agenda for Reform. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press.