The unintended consequences of a standardized knowledge base in advancing educational leadership preparation

Background: The quest for a "knowledge base" in educational administration resulting in the construction of national standards for preparing school leaders has brought with it an unexpected downside. Purpose: It is argued that instead of raising the bar for preparing educational leaders, the standards have lowered them, first by embracing only a limited set of the actual responsibilities of school leaders, resulting in programmatic reductionism, and permitting the licensing of school leaders at sites outside the purview of the university, by definition a form of deprofessionalization. The standards also assume the existence of a static knowledge base tied to a static social system. Current skill sets contained in the standards are in their essence antichange and antidemocratic. Conclusions: The major assumption that must be questioned is the notion or requirement of a stable knowledge base that is a political necessity in accreditation and licensing practices but the hallmark of a dead field of studies empirically.