At a time when America's schools face a critical demand for effective principals and superintendents, the majority of the programs that prepare school leaders range in quality from inadequate to poor. This document presents an executive summary of a new report written by Arthur Levine, the president of Teachers College, Columbia University, that provides a critical examination of leadership programs today and a roadmap for improvement. Drawing from a four-year study of schools of education across the country, the report offers new insights into the ways in which those programs operate, the incentives that drive them, and the perceptions that deans, faculty, alumni, principals and others have of their performance. It examines the programs themselves and their capacity to educate principals and superintendents in the skills and knowledge necessary to lead today's schools and school systems. It offers a nine-point template for judging the quality of school leadership programs. Based on the study's findings, the report concludes that improvement in the conditions of the nation's school leadership programs will require joint action by education schools and their leadership programs, the universities that house them, school districts and states. Specifically, they must: (1) eliminate the incentives that favor low-quality programs; (2) set and enforce minimum standards of quality; and (3) redesign educational leadership programs. [For full report, see ED504142.]