Two hours after leaving the University of Pennsylvania, Principal Paul Barker returns home from three full days of classes. He relaxes at his desk for a second, then picks up a book, ready to start on the next month’s assignments.
Balancing both school work and responsibilities as principal has proven to be “exhausting,” said Barker. “I don’t have much free time; you either pay now or pay later. If I lie on the sofa and watch TV or just goof off for a night or two, I’ve really got to play catch-up.”
However, even with conflicting obligations, Barker is “proud to say [that] I’ve read every single assigned reading in the program [at the University of Pennsylvania] so far.”
Barker is pursuing his Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) through a mid-career doctorate program in educational leadership.
The degree is intended to be completed over 36 months through class work and a final dissertation. Once a month for three semesters of the year (fall, spring, and summer), Barker spends Friday until Monday on the University of Pennsylvania campus, amounting to 27 doctorate level credits a year.
The process began in July of 2008, and Barker, who knocked on wood briefly, “expects to walk” in May 2011
The decision to actually pursue his doctorate was “always in the back of my head,” said Barker. “I like going to school. I’ve always had an interest in maybe doing some teacher formation work on the side. I have an interest in writing.”
The educational program at Penn, ranked 13th in the county by the US News and World Report, focuses midcareer doctorates on instructional, organizational, public, and evidence-based leadership.
“I just finished [classes about] leadership for social studies [which taught] how as a school leader you can help in the effective teaching of social studies. We do a lot of subject classes; we’ve already done science education, math education, literacy education,” said Barker.
Other classes included educational branding (or “understanding what you promised to school community, what you tell the world you are and what you deliver”), public policy (“building links to your community”), professional development for teachers, emotional intelligence (“trying to understand yourself as an emotionally intelligent leader. It was a lot of reflection, thinking about how you’re perceived by others”), and school finance and research allocations.
The courses offered meet specific needs of the educators. “The beauty of what I’m doing, I think, is that its theory meets practice. We’re reading a lot of scholars, but always with the sense that this is for people that are in a career; we’re not just screwing around trying to decide what we’re doing with our lives,” said Barker.
The courses are staggered, ending at different times, and new courses are added each month. Because of this, “you’re not even really conscious of the breaks between semesters,” said Barker.
Barker got his first masters in liberal arts from St. John’s in 1994, and his second in educational administration from Ursuline College in 2000.
Penn uses a cohort model, receiving “hundreds of applicants,” according to Barker, and choosing 25, although two have already dropped out of his class, the seventh cohort to pass through the program.
“They very consciously try and craft the cohort for diversity of background and experiences. It’s a real mix. There are four of us from private schools [and] I’m the only one from a Catholic school. There are people who are already superintendents; there are people who are in charter schools, [and] people who are in central offices,” said Barker.
The varieties of experiences brought into the program have exposed Barker to new problems. He said, “Two of my cohort members had faculty on strike at the beginning of the school year. We don’t have a union shop here, so that’s not something I have to worry about. In New York City, they have a ‘school report card setup.’ It’s all data, and all these numbers come in about student performance, and if the school does well, the principal can get a $25,000 bonus. If the school does poorly, the principal can lose their job.”
Barker added, “They’re amazed when I talk about some of the freedom and creative things we’re able to do here.”
Barker chose Penn after looking into the programs at University of Maryland College Park and Catholic University, among other schools that offered educational leadership doctoral programs. “I didn’t know anything about Penn. I just stumbled across it.”
The timeframe offered by Penn appealed to Barker, especially after witnessing friends who had finished the doctoral class work but never completed the dissertation. “I’m not bad at working with deadlines; tell me what I got to do and give me a timeframe and I’ll have it in,” said Barker. “[For] a lot of programs, you do the coursework and the dissertation is sort of as long as it takes you. There are a lot of Ph.D. programs that are six years, and I don’t have six years. I need to get this thing done.”
In addition, “[Penn] has the high flying faculty. If you read anything in education, a lot of the names you see are people that are teaching there.”
Although Penn is “the most expensive program I looked at,” Barker “couldn’t be more satisfied with the quality” of the education he is receiving.
Kate Froehlich can be reached for comment at [email protected].