Date of Award
6-1-2012
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Department
Education/Leadership in Urban Schools
First Advisor
John Leonard
Second Advisor
Joseph Check
Third Advisor
Ray Shurtleff
Abstract
Since 2005, the National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) has contributed to school leadership training in Massachusetts and has trained over 945 superintendents, principals and school administrators with a very unique mission and leadership style (MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2010) and yet very little is known about the program origins or philosophy. The current study seeks to understand NISL's origins, objectives and financial and philosophical foundations while determining the extent it is understood by educators who have been through the training. This research utilized critical theory to conduct a qualitative study through content analysis of the curriculum and interviews of NISL leadership, facilitators, participants and DESE leaders involved in its implementation. Neoliberal and privatization indicators were also developed and used to determine trends and relationship within the program. NISL is a program that was created by a small group of public school reformers from The National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE), a Washington think tank. Unlike the academies of the past, NISL is a non-collegiate, for-profit, private institution. It was developed as a means to influence public education through the benchmarked training of school leaders and was initially resourced by a combination of private and non-profit organizations. NISL's philosophical foundation derives primarily from Marc Tucker, a noted leader of the standards driven education reform movement, and NCEE. They, in turn, benchmarked the structures and strategies of military, private business and international leadership training and education systems. Participant awareness of the NISL program (history, context and agenda) is minimal. The findings reveal that there are strong elements of both privatization efforts and neoliberalism within the NISL program.
Recommended Citation
Perella, John Michael, "A Critical Study of the National Institute for School Leadership in the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts" (2012). Graduate Doctoral Dissertations. 75.
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/doctoral_dissertations/75