Improving Urban Schools VIA Leadership: Preparing Administrators for the New Millennium

This paper describes an innovative, highly collaborative administrator preparation program specifically designed to prepare leaders for schools in the new millennium. Building upon and extending best practices in administrator preparation programs, the paper describes how a research university and a large urban school system came together to jointly develop and implement a preparation program to meet the needs of urban schools. After discussing the specifics of the program, the paper examines barriers to collaboration and details lessons learned through the collaborative process. The paper concludes with an assessment of the likelihood for reforming administrator preparation programs in light of institutional barriers to collaboration.