Educational Leadership: Tier I, LKES, and Applied School Law
The GACE Educational Leadership assessment is the content test for Georgia's Tier I renewable leadership certificate. It sits alongside an approved leadership preparation program and a leadership performance requirement. Items are written as principal or assistant-principal scenarios: you are told what a school's data, staff, or parent group is doing and asked for the most defensible next action. Correct answers are usually the ones that follow policy and process, use evidence, and involve the right people.
Domains the test samples
- Instructional leadership: curriculum coherence, data teams, coaching, MTSS, TKES observation and feedback cycles, professional learning tied to student need.
- School improvement: needs assessment, root-cause analysis, measurable goals, monitoring, and Georgia's ESSA-aligned improvement designations for low-performing schools.
- Operations: budgeting and resource allocation, master scheduling, facilities, transportation, food service, crisis planning, hiring and human resources.
- Law and policy: student due process, IDEA and Section 504, FERPA, Title IX, services for English learners, educator discipline through the GaPSC, and open records and meetings.
- Stakeholders: family and community engagement, school councils, communication in a crisis.
LKES
Leader evaluation in Georgia uses the Leader Keys Effectiveness System: performance standards covering instructional leadership, school culture, human resources and professional learning, school operations, and school improvement, informed by observations, surveys, and student growth data.
Worked example
A ninth grader with an IEP is caught with a weapon at school. A teacher-administrator wants an immediate long-term suspension. Reasoning: IDEA discipline rules govern first. The district may place the student in an interim alternative educational setting for up to 45 school days for a weapons offense regardless of whether the behavior was a manifestation of the disability, and a manifestation determination review must occur within 10 school days of the decision to change placement. The principal's defensible action is to convene the IEP team, document the placement, and notify parents, not to run a general education hearing first.
Traps that cost marks
- Applying zero-tolerance discipline to a student with an IEP before the manifestation determination.
- Treating FERPA as a barrier to all information sharing rather than to unauthorized disclosure.
- Ignoring school council composition and role when a parent group demands a curriculum change.
- Building a budget from last year's line items instead of from student and staffing need.
- Answering a law scenario with the ethically appealing option rather than the legally required process.