Ohio’s Proposed Principal Apprenticeship: Experiential Learning at All Levels Is Key to Preparing School Leaders

According to Dr. Kimberly Pietsch Miller (pictured here), Chief of Leadership Development for DEW, “Ohio has strong principal preparation programs, but we also know the value of apprenticeship and experiential learning at all levels; the apprenticeship is aimed at providing that deep robust and relevant experience to prepare candidates to lead schools.”

Miller joined DEW about six months ago and brings 35 years of leadership experience to her role, having taught and served as assistant principal, principal, chief academic officer, and superintendent across multiple districts in urban, suburban, rural, and career-technical center environments. Throughout her career and in every position she has held, Dr. Miller has worked to bring adults together in the service of children in order to ensure that all of Ohio’s PK-12 students are prepared for success in life. “Our commitment is to each and every student; it’s 100 percent,” said Miller.

The proposed model. The proposed two-year apprenticeship program would allow principals to obtain on-the-job training in their first year of participation and work as an apprentice in their second year. In year one, candidates would stay in their current position (e.g., as a teacher) and take core foundational courses (15 semester hours if earning a master’s degree). In year two, candidates would move out of their current role and instead work and be paid as an apprentice, continuing to receive on-the-job experience as an administrator and participating in job-embedded courses or professional learning via seminars and workshops.

“I like to call it just-in-time education and experience, or training to understand the experiences. For example, as you're having the experience of sitting in but not leading an IEP meeting as an apprentice, you're obtaining information about IDEA and also experiencing what it means to serve as a district representative,” said Miller. “I always go back to the old proverb, ‘tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.’ And so this is about involving people, embedding them in a school where they can really truly learn, and providing a mentor while they're in their preparation program.”

“We would hope that apprentices would continue to have a mentor once they complete the apprenticeship and we encourage everyone, from principal to superintendent, to take part in those mentoring and first-year programs that BASA and OAESA and OASSA offer because they are critically important,” Miller added.

The apprenticeship model uses a cohort format with 20 to 25 individuals (i.e., candidates) participating per cohort. Apprenticeship candidates must hold at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university. Eligible candidates are: (1) individuals who are current PK-12 teachers working under an Ohio teaching license in public, non-public, or community schools with multiple years of classroom teaching preferred; or (2) professionals working in a field other than education with multiple years of experience in the same field and teaching/training and supervision or oversight of individuals preferred.

Evidence of leadership experience (e.g., serving as a department chair, participating as a building leadership team member, holding military rank, etc.) is required, as are letters of recommendation and completion of an assessment. All candidates must complete 225 clock hours of related instruction or coursework and 2,000 clock hours of on-the-job training.

Those strategic priorities address: (1) Literacy achievement (every student reads at/above grade level), (2) Accelerating Learning (every student accelerates their learning in English language arts and mathematics through proactive, evidence-based, and individualized supports they need to succeed) for all children, (3) Workforce Readiness (every student leaves the Ohio PK-12 system with the knowledge, skills, and experiences to be part of a dynamically skilled, productive, and purposeful workforce; Ohio employers have access to a skilled, productive workforce), and (4) Student Wellness (learning environments are safe, supportive, and healthy so that students are ready to learn).

“We understand the value of experiential learning and experience in the real world for each of our PK through grade 12 students. It’s really the same for adults; the more we experience something, the more ingrained it becomes,” offered Miller.

“The apprenticeship doesn’t replace existing preparation programs. It’s another option that candidates might want to explore that provides a more involved experience as part of their preparation. So, rather than it being all coursework-driven and then you get your experience when you get the job, it's really providing that on-the-job experience as part of preparation,” stated Miller.

Continuous growth requires a coordinated, system-wide effort. “We have to collaborate across agencies and associations and other organizations if we're truly going to support education. We need everyone in the state who cares about kids and learning to work together; that's how we'll succeed,” said Miller. Rather than focusing on improvement efforts that are conducted in isolation of the larger education system, Miller supports a systemic view of improvement:

The Ohio Leadership Advisory Council (OLAC) delineates the essential leadership practices that the superintendent, district leadership team (DLT), building leadership team (BLT), and teacher-based teams (TBTs) can do to improve instructional practices and student performance.

As Miller notes, “schools that function well have effective building leadership teams, teacher-based teams, district leadership teams – all of those teams are in place and they're aligned.”

Professional learning must be ongoing and involve ALL personnel. “You cannot have improved student learning or improved student outcomes if you haven't equipped the adults and supported the adults that are in the system,” stated Miller, highlighting the critical importance of ongoing professional learning for all staff.

Bradley and colleagues (2023) distinguish professional learning (PL) from professional development (PD), likening PD to a more traditional “sit and get approach” while emphasizing the value of PL attributes such as active participant engagement and sustained and ongoing structures that allow for collaboration, coaching, and feedback. They also emphasize the importance of experiencing the standards, rather than just reading or talking about them (https://learningforward.org/journal/accelerating-learning/professional-learning-vs-pd-the-distinction-matters/).

“I think the most important thing about professional learning for our educators, teachers, principals, central office personnel, and superintendents is that it must be ongoing and a regular part of their career path. I don't mean that it should be necessarily left up to the individual educator alone even though individually we need to have that internal accountability for our own professional growth and learning. But, rather, I think districts need to recognize you can't just provide professional learning to your teachers. You need to be providing it to every single person from your administrative assistants to your custodians, to your administrators; everybody needs to have ongoing learning and it needs to be based in the research and the evidence of what we should be doing,” said Miller.

“We're trying to create an experiential model for the principal apprenticeship, but can we completely prepare somebody for everything they're going to experience? No, and that's why that ongoing learning is so important. We need to develop a learning culture, a culture where the adults are as committed to learning as they are to their students’ learning,” she added.

Calling All Leaders; Including EVERY Student

The University of Cincinnati Systems Development & Improvement Center (UC SDI), with support from the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce (DEW), has a long history of supporting districts in Ohio to improve their use of inclusive instructional leadership (IIL) practices for the purpose of improving adult collective learning and learning opportunities and outcomes for all students. IIL initiatives strive to increase coherence in the use of evidence-based improvement strategies across entire school systems in order to benefit all children, regardless of school or classroom assignment.

IIL practices can be described as actions to mobilize a school district, or schools within the district, to provide equitable opportunities to learn for each student while promoting high levels of learning for all students and each subgroup of students. This approach combines instructional leadership with inclusive leadership through the use of four domains of practice: (1) prioritizing the improvement of teaching and learning, (2) building capacity through support and accountability, (3) sustaining an open and collaborative culture, and (4) promoting systemwide learning.

UC SDI provides a continuum of collaborative professional learning programs for school-level leaders (i.e., principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders), district/central office-level leaders, and teams that include both district and school personnel.

Ohio Leadership for Inclusion, Implementation, and Instructional Improvement (OLi) serves school-level leaders; Advancing Inclusive Principal Leadership (AiPL) serves leadership and implementation teams, Central Office Inclusive Instructional Leadership (COIIL) serves central office personnel and principal supervisors, and the Coaching Center supports regional and state-level personnel. All IIL professional learning programs are grounded in the four domains referenced above and are made possible through the use of the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP) and its associated leadership team structures (i.e., DLT, BLT, TBTs).

Go to https://ohioinclusiveinstructionalleadership.org for a description of each program and a short video spotlighting program participants.

Inclusion or inclusivity. Ohio’s improvement framework is grounded in a commitment to shared leadership. Miller acknowledges that, at times, the superintendent or the principal needs to make the decision; however, having “those systems in place to give voice across the board is going to create that more collaborative culture. We need to focus in on providing really great instruction to our students, creating a culture where kids want to be in school and they feel welcome and they feel like they can succeed. If we do that, the other things will take care of themselves.”