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With 1,130 schools serving 500,000 +  students, California has the largest number of charter schools of any state in the country. The rapid expansion of charters over the last decade has prompted the development of quality charter school leadership preparation programs in southwestern California (Benjamin-Edwards, R. (2012). The new reality for charter and autonomous school leaders. In K. B. Hughes & S. A. M. Silva (Eds.), Identifying leaders for urban charter, autonomous and independent schools: Above and beyond the standards (Vol. 18, pp. 315). Advances in Educational Administration. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.). Charter school leadership programs from Loyola Marymount and Fielding University as well as in-house leadership programs developed by large charter management organizations like KIPP and Green Dot provided the foundation for the Charter Autonomous School Leadership Academy (CASLA), which opened in 2011 at the California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) in Carson, CA. This chapter will capture reflections from sitting administrators who graduated from CASLA about the impact of that program on their practice. It will highlight the specific components of the preparation program that these leaders identify as most strongly influencing their work. The chapter will include a discussion of components such as the leadership framework, field based project, and analysis of leadership dispositions including description of how learning in these areas assists work in charter and autonomous schools.

This chapter examines the process of ongoing planning and changing of an innovative urban school leadership development and preparation program at California State University Dominguez Hills. Currently in its fourth consecutive year, the five-year Urban School Leaders (USL) program is the result of a partnership with Local Districts 5, 6, 7, and 8 within Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). The program is intended to prepare, place, and retain leaders for high needs schools and provide staff development to these leaders with the ultimate outcome resulting in student achievement gains. LAUSD Local Districts 5–8 are contiguous and in close proximity to CSUDH. These districts encompass some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods, including East LA, South LA, South Central LA, and the Harbor area. In this chapter, we outline the various components of the USL program and share reflections on the planning and improvement process in our efforts to strengthen and improve the community of professional practice within the program.