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The UW is going national with yet another leadership initiative. The Smart Tools Academy is well on its way to giving every principal and superintendent in the state of Washington a crash course in information technologies. Intense interest from other states prompted the university to look at sharing its strategies across the land. In March, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — which funded Smart Tools — committed $100 million to spreading the academy's strategies to every state through grants to business and education consortia. The need for technology training for administrators is acute. A 10-year study by the National Association of Elementary School Principals reported in 1998 that principals' "greatest professional development need is help understanding and utilizing technology to improve administrative tasks and classroom instruction." "The proliferation of technology has many of us struggling to stay abreast of the most recent innovations and applications," researchers James Doud and Edward Keller note in their report, The K-8 Principal in 1998. "This issue will consume much of principals' time and attention well into the 21st century." Smart Tools germinated a couple of years ago when a bunch of technology-related businesses in Washington were trying to figure out which factors — taxes, land use, telecommunications policy, etcetera — most helped to "sustain and grow the innovation economy," Fox recounts. One thing kept bobbing to the surface in these discussions: education. "Being the kind of industries that they are, they depend on intellectual capital," Fox notes. So this group, the Technology Alliance — which brings together CEOs from biotechnology, information technology, electronics technology, trade associations, and four major research institutions — launched a high-powered task force on K-12 education in Washington. Fox sat on the task force, along with such luminaries as State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson, Bill Gates, Sr., and Governor Gary Locke. A series of case studies compiled by the task force spotlighted a recurring theme. "One thing came up over and over, in districts large and small, urban and rural, rich and poor," Fox says. "For those that were most successful in integrating technology thoughtfully into the school environment, the most pivotal thing and the key component was school leaders." So Fox pitched an idea: How about doing a leadership institute for each and every school leader in the state over a short period of time? "For a group of CEOs to reach out to the CEOs in the schools made perfectly good sense," Fox observes. The program was piloted in the spring of 1999, backed by $6 million from the Gates Foundation and additional funds from SAP, a software company. By March, in a series of intensive, four-day, residential academies around the state, the program had trained 1,000 of the state's 2,300 principals and superintendents. The rest will receive training by summer's end. The academy's faculty — who are mostly practicing educators and specialists in education technology — guide participants in facilitated discussions, online coursework, and hands — on workshops with computer hardware and software. They touch on "all the issues associated with introducing and integrating technology into a learning environment — administration, support, issues around levies, networking, building technological capacity in schools, curriculum, professional development for teachers," Fox says. The principals bring computer skills ranging from zero to vast. Most fall somewhere in the middle. The academy does a lot of "deliberate social engineering" — mixing the old hands with the newbies. "There's an interesting group dynamic that arises," Fox says. "They begin to teach one another. In many ways, they have the kind of experience that you'd like kids to have in a classroom working in groups. It's a little chaotic and noisy, but people learn a great deal. It's fun to watch." For more information about the Smart Tools Academy, contact Susannah Malarkey, Academy Codirector, Executive Director of the Technology Alliance, susannahm@seattlechamber.com, (206) 389-7348, or, Louis Fox, Academy Codirector, Vice Provost for Educational Partnerships, University of Washington, lfox@u.washington.edu, (206) 685-4745.
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The New Principal Special Report:
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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