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About the Principal Licensure Program
The UO 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?
The UO Principal Licensure program’s curriculum content, sequence, and proficiency requirements are tailored to develop advanced leadership capabilities that enable individuals to lead schools 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, and their schools.
- 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.
The Principal 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.
Principal Licensure Course Sequence
The principal licensure program requires a total of 40 credits.
Year 1
2023 Summer term – Total credits: 4
| Title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 635 Executive Leadership for Principals | 4 |
2023 Fall term – Total credits: 8
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 617 Oregon School Management and Budget | 4 |
| EDLD 686 Oregon Legal Issues | 4 |
2024 Winter term – Total credits: 4
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 614 Leading School Improvement Through Curriculum and Assessment | 4 |
2024 Spring term – Total credits: 8
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 613 Ethical Leadership | 4 |
| EDLD 616 Supervision of Teaching and Learning | 4 |
Year 2
2024 Summer term – Total credits: 4
| Title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 612 Communications and Community Relations | 4 |
2024 Fall term – Total credits: 4
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 637 Principal Licensure Clinical Internship I | 4 |
2025 Winter term – Total credits: 4
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 645 Principal Licensure Clinical Internship II | 4 |
2025 Spring term – Total credits: 4
| title | credits |
|---|---|
| EDLD 646 Principal Licensure Clinical Internship III: Capstone Project | 4 |
Candidates seek licensure through TSPC with UO/COSA’s assistance once all program work is completed.