Educational Leadership, CAS

Contact:

Leela George, 150 Huntington Hall, 315-443-2685, legeorge@syr.edu

Our programs in educational leadership reflect the conviction that school leaders serve all students best when they practice student-centered leadership, placing students who have been historically marginalized at the center of the educational mission and practice.

The Certificate of Advanced Study program in educational leadership is registered with New York State to lead to dual certification of its graduates as School Building Leaders and School District Leaders, qualifying candidates to serve in any school leadership position in New York State (except school district business leader, see School District Business Leadership (Professional Certification), CAS for more information). The program prepares school leaders who have the deep knowledge, practical skills, and passionate commitment to ensure that every student has full and equal access to a high quality education and attains exemplary levels of learning and personal development. Our program has recently been redesigned and reregistered with New York State, based on these principles. We have retained our long-standing emphasis on preparing school principals and district administrators to be curriculum and instructional leaders, but our program now has a new, sharper focus on a single basic question:

How do school leaders ensure that every student in their school systems succeeds?

Student Learning Outcomes

1.ELCC Standard 1.0. An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by collaboratively facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a shared school vision of learning through the collection and use of data to identify school goals, assess organizational effectiveness, and implement school plans to achieve school goals; promotion of continual and sustainable school improvement; and evaluation of school progress and revision of school plans supported by school-based stakeholders.

2.ELCC Standard 2.0: An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning through collaboration, trust, and a personalized learning environment with high expectations for students; creating and evaluating a comprehensive, rigorous and coherent curricular and instructional school program; developing and supervising the instructional and leadership capacity of school staff; and promoting the most effective and appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning within a school environment.

3.ELCC Standard 3.0: An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by ensuring the management of the school organization, operation, and resources through monitoring and evaluating the school management and operational systems; efficiently using human, fiscal, and technological resources in a school environment; promoting and protecting the welfare and safety of school students and staff; developing school capacity for distributed leadership; and ensuring that teacher and organizational time is focused to support high-quality instruction and student learning.

4.ELCC Standard 4.0: An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources on behalf of the school by collecting and analyzing information pertinent to improvement of the school’s educational environment; promoting an understanding, appreciation, and use of the diverse cultural, social, and intellectual resources within the school community; building and sustaining positive school relationships with families and caregivers; and cultivating productive school relationships with community partners.

5.ELCC Standard 5.0: An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner to ensure a school system of accountability for every student’s academic and social success by modeling school principles of self-awareness, reflective practice, transparency, and ethical behavior as related to their roles within the school; safeguarding the values of democracy, equity, and diversity within the school; evaluating the potential moral and legal consequences of decision making in the school; and promoting social justice within the school to ensure that individual student needs inform all aspects of schooling.

6.ELCC Standard 6.0: An education leader applies knowledge that promotes the success of every student by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context through advocating for school students, families, and caregivers; acting to influence local, district, state, and national decisions affecting student learning in a school environment; and anticipating and assessing emerging trends and initiatives in order to adapt school-based leadership strategies.

Certificate Requirements

The C.A.S. program requires thirty graduate credits in educational leadership (nine courses and a rigorous administrative internship), thirty additional graduate credits (typically from a prior masters degree), and successful completion of a state-administered examination in School District Leadership. (Completion of a second examination, in School Building Leadership, is required for certification but not for program graduation.) The program’s courses, field experiences, and other requirements are designed to prepare candidates to support the continuous learning of all students and adults, and the continuous improvement of systems that make their learning possible, emphasizing the relationships between curriculum and instructional development, supervision of instruction, professional development, and organizational development, and the ways in which information on student learning can be used to improve teaching and learning.