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About the Professional Administrator Licensure Program
The University of Oregon has offered programs to prepare school and district leaders (e.g., principals and superintendents) for licensure for decades, with the programs changing over time to meet new requirements set by the state. The most recent change, adopted by Oregon’s Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC) for implementation in August of 2022, required a substantial redesign of programs preparing school and district administrators. New expectations set by the state include more credits in principal preparation programs, substantial redesign of the clinical internship experiences, and a much greater emphasis on understanding and implementing initiatives to address historical inequities with our educational systems.
This program is the result of a new partnership between the University of Oregon and the Coalition of Oregon School of Administrators (COSA) to meet TSPC’s recently updated administrator standards and licensing requirements.
What can I do with this licensure?
Our Professional Administrator Licensure program will help prepare graduates to lead the improvement of outcomes for all students. We do this by preparing our students to lead and manage schools and districts effectively, with a particular focus on leading for equity. The goal of these programs is to develop effective, highly regarded, and influential leaders in educational practice, policy, and scholarship.
The UO Professional Licensure program’s curriculum content, sequence, and proficiency requirements are tailored to develop advanced leadership capabilities that enable individuals to lead school districts in making decisions and implementing programs grounded in evidence-based practices. The program’s mission is to develop education leaders who are equipped to apply data-driven evidence to promote equitable outcomes and address opportunity gaps for students, schools, and education systems by working to:
- Raise the most pressing problems of practice in the service of ensuring equitable outcomes and eliminating disparities for students.
- Identify, analyze, and synthesize relevant sources of evidence in making decisions that serve the best interests of students, communities, schools, and their districts.
- Communicate and integrate the best available research evidence with knowledge and expertise of professional educators in the field aligned with specific community needs and assets.
- Take targeted, evidence-based actions that change systems to better meet the needs of all students.
Students in our programs will learn both content and analytical skills. Our programs endorse a systems-level organizational theory of education and focus on implementation of research and evaluation methods to both understand and affect that system. Our programs provide value-added skills and perspectives for educational leaders (principals and superintendents) as well as researchers and consultants working with local and state educational agencies.
The Professional Licensure program is designed to address the growing need of education professionals to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to lead school systems in today’s data-driven, change-oriented environment, with a particular focus on leading for equity. This program follows current recommendations from the University Council for Educational Administration, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Education Schools Project to craft licensure programs designed for working professionals who can initiate reforms in current educational settings. Our Principal Licensure program anchors its content to case-based problems in the field.
The use of Zoom for synchronous sessions and Panopto recordings shared via Canvas for our asynchronous sessions enables students from across the state to participate in our programs while continuing their full-time employment in the schools.
Professional Licensure Course Sequence
The professional licensure program requires a total of 27 credits.
Year 1
2023 Fall term – Total credits: 6
| Title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 638 Oregon Advanced School Law | 3 |
| EDLD 644 Learning Organization | 3 |
2024 Winter term – Total credits: 7
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 643 Evidence-Based Decision-Making | 3 |
| EDUC 675 Oregon School and District Finance | 4 |
2024 Spring term – Total credits: 7
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 611 K-12 Education Policy for School Leaders | 2 |
| EDLD 649 Ethical Governance for School District Leaders | 2 |
| EDLD 687 Supervisory Practices for Administrators | 3 |
Year 2
2024 Summer – (Variable credits)
| Title | credits |
|---|---|
|
EDLD 618 Professional Administrator Licensure Clinical Internship I |
1-7 |
2024 Fall – (Variable credits)
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 618 Professional Administrator Licensure Clinical Internship I Students must complete a minimum total of 7 credits of 618 to complete the program |
1-7 |
2025 Winter – (Variable credits)
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 618 Professional Administrator Licensure Clinical Internship I Students must complete a minimum total of 7 credits of 618 to complete the program |
1-7 |
Candidates seek licensure through TSPC with UO/COSA’s assistance once all program work is completed. The Clinical Internship experience is a total of 7 credits and requires a minimum of 200 hours of meaningful district-level experiences distributed across the District Level NELP standards. A University internship supervisor and a district-based supervisor form the supervision team for each candidate. All University Internship Supervisors are highly qualified and experienced Oregon administrators, and all District-Based Supervisors must have held an Oregon Administrator license for at least three years. During the Internship experience, candidates are engaged in reading, discussion board posts and job-embedded assignments.