Historical Context

Early in 2000, the Iowa Department of Education (DE) was awarded a grant by the Wallace Foundation to adapt the national standards into state leadership standards for Iowa. The DE tasked School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) with the administration of the grant activities. Over the course of the next several years, SAI convened a broad-based coalition of hundreds of administrators to help develop Iowa’s leadership standards. The work started with superintendents in 2001-02 and continued with principals in 2002-03. The foundational base for Iowa’s standard work came from the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), who in 1996 engaged researchers and more than 1,000 school leaders in the process of creating what became the ISLLC standards. The end result of the Iowa coalition’s effort was the Iowa Standards for School Leaders (ISSL), which were officially adopted by the State Board in 2008 and remain in place today.

In November 2015, the ISLLC standards were replaced by the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL). Recognizing the significant changes in the educational landscape since 1996, the National Board Policy for Education Administration in collaboration with national educational leadership associations (NAESP, NASSP, AASA) convened a group of researchers and over 1,000 school and district leaders to study potential gaps among the 2008 Standards, to consider the ever-changing day-to-day work of education leaders, and to reflect on leadership demands of the future. The resulting 2015 PSEL represent two decades of research correlating school leadership with educational outcomes, the changing demographics of our students, the power of communities of practice, the importance of attending to social and emotional learning needs of all within the learning organization, and a heightened focus on equity and cultural responsiveness with students at the center of all that we do.

At the same time the ISSLC standards were under review, the Iowa Council on Educator Quality met to study educator evaluation, teacher and administrator standards, professional development plans, and evaluator training as directed by Iowa Code 256.29. In October of 2016, the Council published six recommendations, one of which referred to creating learning progressions aligned to the teaching and leadership standards (see p. 8 of the Council’s report). Before any action was taken on this recommendation, school leaders in Iowa identified a need to revisit the ISSL in light of the newly adopted PSEL. SAI convened a group of school leaders and DE personnel in the spring of 2017 to review, compare, and contrast the current ISSL standards with the new PSEL. Following that review, the committee recommended to the State Board of Education that a team be convened to “Iowanize” the PSEL such that they best reflect the Iowa context. This team has met multiple times to finalize the standards themselves and to generate tools and resources to support an effective implementation. The State Board adopted the PSEL as Iowa's new ISSL effective July 2021.