We reviewed the scholarship on capacities for educational leadership for the past decade of the pre-reform era (1976-1985), as well as a recent decade of the reform era (2005-2015), and compared scholarship from both decades with the current Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. We found that scholars in the past decade of the pre-reform era wrote most often about technical management and the application of behavioral and social science, the greatest priorities of scholars during a 10-year period of the reform era were school improvement and instructional leadership, and the capacities most often represented in the Standards were school improvement and technical management.