University of Mississippi to train charter school principals under new partnership
The University of Mississippi School of Education and the Mississippi Charter Schools Association have announced a collaboration to train aspiring charter school principals through the university’s Principal Corps program.
The arrangement makes the university the first flagship state institution in Mississippi to commit dedicated leadership-development resources to the state’s charter school sector. The partnership is expected to become a long-term institutional relationship.
Charter schools are public schools that operate independently from traditional school districts, offering more flexibility in their educational approaches while still being held accountable for their performance. They stress academic achievement while having the ability to make allowances for variable schedules and different levels of focus on individual subjects.
The Mississippi Principal Corps has trained school administrators since 2008 through a graduate program combining coursework, mentorship and a full-time administrative internship leading to either a Master of Education or Education Specialist degree. The program has produced more than 175 alumni serving Mississippi schools since its founding. Under the new arrangement, aspiring charter school leaders will be admitted to the same program alongside educators from traditional public school districts. Ambition Preparatory Charter School in Jackson will serve as the first charter school host site for a Principal Corps participant’s internship.
Braxton Stowe, director of the Principal Corps program, said in this week’s official announcement that the expansion to charter school leaders “strengthens public education statewide.” John H. Dixon, executive director of the Mississippi Charter Schools Association, said the partnership reflects the organization’s focus on strengthening charter school quality and expanding access to charter options across Mississippi. DeArchie Scott, a Mississippi Charter Schools Association board member and the founder of Ambition Preparatory Charter School (who is also a University of Mississippi alumnus) said serving as the first charter host site “reflects our commitment to developing strong leaders for the future.”
The partnership represents a new level of institutional engagement between Mississippi’s public university system and the state’s charter sector. The legislature authorized charter schools in 2013, establishing the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board to approve and oversee charter applications.
The state’s charter sector has grown slowly since authorization, with a small number of schools currently operating. According to the Mississippi Department of Education’s most recent published data, charter schools are operating in the Jackson, Greenville and Clarksdale areas, with additional applications under review. The University of Mississippi’s decision to admit charter school candidates to the same leadership pipeline that has supplied principals to Mississippi’s traditional public school districts for the past 15 years marks the first time a flagship state institution has formally allocated its educator-preparation resources to the charter sector.
Mississippi’s 2013 charter authorization law followed a multi-year legislative push that included an earlier 2010 charter authorization bill sponsored by then-state Sen. Michael Watson of Pascagoula, which failed. Watson, now Mississippi’s Secretary of State and a candidate for lieutenant governor, sponsored several charter-related measures during his Senate tenure that were structurally similar to model legislation distributed during the same period by the American Legislative Exchange Council (known as ALEC).
The partnership begins with the next Principal Corps cohort. Participants in the program may earn either a Master of Education or Education Specialist degree from the University of Mississippi School of Education while completing the program’s administrative internship. The University of Mississippi and the Mississippi Charter Schools Association have not publicly identified additional charter school host sites beyond Ambition Preparatory, nor have they disclosed how many charter school participants the program expects to admit in its first cohort.
Image: University of Mississippi Principal Corps faculty (via MPC website)
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