Gain essential skills in the Business Administration Scale (BAS) Reliability Training to ensure accurate and consistent program assessments.
Maintain your BAS Assessor status with recertification required two years after initial certification. Learn about eligibility, steps, and deadlines.
Join the PAS-3 Reliability Training April 7–11, 2025, to enhance your skills in early childhood program administration and assessment.
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Explore how collaboration and unity strengthen early childhood leadership at the McCormick Center
This document may be printed, photocopied, and disseminated freely with attribution. All content is the property of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership.
Discover how to build a sustainable continuum of support that ensures professional development truly sticks in early childhood leadership.
This document may be printed, photocopied, and disseminated freely with attribution. All content is the property of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership.
This document may be printed, photocopied, and disseminated freely with attribution. All content is the property of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership.
Discover five simple steps to inspire positive change and make a meaningful impact in your community and workplace.
This document may be printed, photocopied, and disseminated freely with attribution. All content is the property of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership.
Discover 5 simple and effective ways to create a pleasant work environment that boosts morale, productivity, and employee satisfaction.
This resource is part of our Research Notes series. The upsurge in adding preK to elementary education has many principals and district leaders facing uncharted waters. School systems designed for traditional elementary education may not be a good fit for preK, especially for instructional leadership. Some concerns have been raised about whether principals are prepared to support and supervise preK teachers. 1,2 The McCormick Center partnered with the National Association for Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and New America to explore instructional leadership in school-based preK classrooms across the U.S. NAESP members were surveyed about various aspects of instructional leadership in preK. This study expands our understanding of who is providing instructional leadership and how specific functions are distributed. SAMPLE An online survey—the National Principals’ Survey on Early Childhood Instructional Leadership 3 —was conducted in January 2016 with the NAESP membership. There were 459 principals who fully completed at least one section of the survey and of these, 321 (70%) reported they had an early learning program in their school. Respondents’ schools were located in 49 states or territories and the District of Columbia. Of the schools with preK, 67% offered preK up to middle school, 18% had preK and primary classrooms, and 15% were exclusively preK classrooms. The average preK enrollment of all the schools that offered early childhood education was 90 children. Only one-fourth of the principals of schools with preK programs held early childhood certification. A majority of principals, however, had some coursework in early childhood education and had teaching experience in early childhood or elementary classrooms. RESULTS Most of the instructional leadership functions were primarily performed by individuals with five role titles—principal, early childhood director, early childhood coordinator at the district level, district curriculum coordinator, and teacher leader. The following table shows the percentage of schools in which the primary person responsible for various instructional leadership functions was identified with one of these five role titles.
