A team of Educational Leadership faculty and staff/doctoral examined a program redesign to address concerns of time to educational leadership doctoral degree completion. The aim was to improve students’ skills and knowledge in the areas of scholarly practitioner research and academic writing, which in turn could improve time to degree completion while maintaining high self-efficacy. An ex-post-facto correlational research design determined whether a relationship existed between self-efficacy and educational leadership doctoral students perceived versus actual program progression as measured by attainment of major transitional points in a doctoral program.