Preparing Tomorrow's Educational Leaders: An Inquiry regarding the Wisdom of Utilizing the Position of Assistant Principal as an Internship or Apprenticeship to Prepare Future Principals

For as long as the position has existed, the assistant principalship has been viewed as the logical and proper avenue to prepare aspiring leaders to be principals. In that sense, the position is seen as an apprenticeship or internship experience. This article questions the wisdom of this assumption and suggests that the assistant principalship is poorly defined and structured; highly unsatisfactory for many, if not most, participants seeking to become a principal; and, perhaps, is actually quite disfunctional as a preparation activity.