ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses questions and issues on professional standards in general and possible standards for instructional supervision in particular. Proponents of instructional supervision standards argue that standards create criteria for professionalizing instructional supervision, require managers and leaders to rethink existing systems and practices, and illuminate the best practice in the field. Decisions on the scope of instructional supervision standards are related directly to decisions on the scope of instructional supervision itself. The development of supervision standards provides us an opportunity to focus on the intersection of instructional leadership and school culture, a topic that supervision and supervision standards must address if supervision is to effectively foster schoolwide improvement of teaching and learning. The relationship between standards and assessment seems clear to many in the standards movement. Standards are written so they can guide practice, and to evaluate the success of practice in relation to standards there must be some sort of assessment.
