Tricia Browne-Ferrigno

The U.S. Department of Education has selected a UK-developed educational leadership program as a case study site for possible inclusion in a national best practices guide on school leadership preparation.

The Principals Excellence Program (PEP), established two years ago by a half-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education through No Child Left Behind legislation, was one of six leadership initiatives selected for evaluation from a pool of almost 50 different programs across the United States. PEP was developed by the College of Education in partnership with the Pike County public school system.

Representatives from WestEd, a non-profit educational agency compiling a best practices guide for the federal education department, will conduct a site visit at the University of Kentucky and the Pike County School District.

The guide will be used as an informational resource for school districts across the nation seeking strategies to improve the quality of their educational leadership. Tricia Browne-Ferrigno, PEP project director and assistant professor in the Department of Administration and Supervision, was thrilled with the news.

“When we began this partnership with Pike County, one of our goals was to develop a program that offered underserved and rural school systems a means to increase their pool of educational leaders. We are trying to transform the principalship from school management into visionary instructional leadership. We are very pleased with the progress our program has made thus far. Being selected for this guide is a good indication we are achieving that goal,” Browne-Ferrigno commented.

The reasons given for PEP’s selection are “its unique vision to change the principalship; the work organizers have put into establishing support for the program in the local school districts; and its innovative integration of theory and practice,” according to Laraine Roberts, a senior research associate with WestEd.

Additionally, participation “as a case study site is a tremendous contribution to fellow practitioners across the nation who will learn from [PEP’s] pioneering and promising work,” Roberts continued.

WestEd researchers will spend two days in late July visiting the PEP implementation sites to conduct interviews and collect additional data. Approximately 50,000 copies of the best practices guide will be distributed to school systems across the United States in November 2004.