This is a practical bold noholds barred look at challenges facing educational leaders and the university programs that prepare them through midcentury. It examines key continuities and discontinuities of current times for school education and society. Both practice and preparation occur in contested social space the implications of which are explored in a post industrial digital age.The stark warning signs of the conflict roiling educational leadership includes the resegregation and marketization of the public schools the demonization of teacher unions attempts to deprofessionalize professional preparation the continuing achievement gap which ignores larger social inequalities the debasement of education degrees by online diploma mills the escalating culture of numbers and cheating scandals and the erosion of fulltime seasoned faculty providing leadership to university preparation programs. The promise of social justice leadership anchored in a fastchanging demographic portrait of increasing national diversity is encapsulated in the construct of leadership accoutrementamp39s which awakens the art and science of leadership.. Finally the authors propose the pedagogically centered leadership for creating a functional bridge between leadership and learning in preparation and practice.