Can This Department Be Saved? The Educational Leadership Department at Bayou State University

Abstract

This case describes the work of two educational leadership professors who have been asked to serve as outsider reviewers of an educational leadership department at a large urban university. The department has a number of problems, and the university’s provost seems intent on closing it. The provost’s view of the department has been shaped in part by Arthur Levine’s Educating School Leaders, which characterized educational leadership programs as having weak faculty, curricular disarray, and low admission requirements. Over the course of several days, the two professors interview the department’s faculty members and review documentary evidence. At the conclusion of their investigation, they disagree about what they should recommend to the provost. One reviewer believes the department should be closed, and the other believes that the department should be saved and its programs strengthened.