01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 19, 2004

BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The school district has secured $1 million from the Wallace Foundation for the third year of an apprenticeship program for teachers who aspire to be principals.

The "grow-your-own" strategy was begun in 2001 to combat dwindling applications for administrative positions as the traditional role of the principal as an operations manager has shifted in recent years to emphasize leadership in academic reform, especially in urban areas.

The hybrid approach combines academic study with work experience in which each aspiring principal works under the supervision of a certified administrator.

The Providence program is linked to a state initiative, also funded by Wallace, that coordinates similar work-study sites for aspiring principals in six other Rhode Island districts, according to Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

Krieger said yesterday that Wallace renewed the state's $600,000 school leadership grant for the coming academic year.

In addition to Providence and the state Department of Education, Wallace is funding multi-year school leadership programs in 11 other large urban districts, including Hartford and Springfield, Mass., and their state departments of education.

Each of the other districts will receive $1 million, except for New York City, which will receive $5 million.

The funding can be renewed for two more years.

Since the Wallace program began two and a half years ago, 9,456 people nationwide have participated in activities for aspiring principals, according to the foundation.

Of that total, more than half, or about 5,200, have been women, and nearly a third, some 2,800 people, are of minority backgrounds.

The state-district partnership aims to develop policies and practices that will have an impact on school leadership far beyond the sites receiving direct support from the Wallace Foundation, according to Richard Laine, the foundation's director of education.

"To help raise student achievement more broadly and rapidly than one school at a time, we have focused on two interrelated points of influence: states and districts," Laine said in a statement.

"By working on these different levels and creating partnerships with community leaders, unions, universities and state officials, district and school leaders can get the support they need to deliver results for all students," he said.

In addition to training future administrators, the next phase of the program will focus on changing the working conditions for administrators so they can be more effective, Laine said in an interview yesterday.

Districts are good at giving school administators more responsibility, Laine said, but "seldom do we distribute authority."

For example, he said, a good school principal is said to be one who analyzes test results to determine what academic areas need attention and the types of classroom strategies that should be used.

"But if I don't give you the data to act on," he said, the principal cannot do the analysis.

If the training of school leaders is improved but they are not given the tools and authority they need to do their job, he said, it can be a "recipe for disaster."