With approximately 50 percent of school administrators retiring over the next 10 years, school leader preparation programs are under pressure to admit adequate numbers of candidates to justify their costs and continued existence. Candidate recruitment and selection suffer, however, from ongoing practical problems including the use of grade-point averages, recommendations/references, Graduate Record Examination scores, writing samples, and personal interviews as primary criteria for assessing candidates' merits. Consequences are low standards of admission, lowered quality of instruction, diminished status of educational administration programs in the eyes of the public, and candidates' receiving credentials just by taking requisite courses. Auditioning candidates in much the same way as is done in the performing arts is recommended as a behavior-based way of evaluating how potential school leaders perform in real-life situations. Two scripted scenarios are described in which a candidate interacts with an irate parent over the phone, and another interacts personally with a concerned parent group. Assessment forms provide information on how effectively each scenario was handled in ways not necessarily addressed by traditional criteria. It is hoped that by adding the audition to school-leader selection criteria, the selection process itself will be improved. (Contains 21 references and 4 tables.) (RT)