NEW LEADERS FOR NEW SCHOOLS OFFERS NEW VISION FOR SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new report released today by
New Leaders for New Schools calls for the entire education field - the federal
government, states, local school systems, and philanthropic funders in
particular - to fundamentally re-define effective school leadership and to
align their policies to this new definition, especially to drive strategies
for effective teaching and to support effective turnarounds of low-performing
schools. The report sets forth an evidence-based vision for principal
effectiveness rooted in deep accountability for making student achievement
gains and in developing quality teachers to meet that goal.
The new report, entitled Principal Effectiveness: A New Principalship to Drive
Student Achievement, Teacher Effectiveness, and School Turnarounds, highlights
a new analysis of student data in New Leaders-led schools by the RAND
Corporation, which finds that among the lowest performing schools in a large
urban system, there is a gap in average student performance of 15 percentile
points between the highest and lowest gaining schools. This percentile
variance is comparable to the achievement differences between effective and
ineffective teachers and is 2.5 times the impact of small class sizes. The
finding also supports New Leaders for New Schools' belief in the vital
importance of turning around historically low performing schools through
whole-school change, led by a well-trained principal with a supportive local
policy context.
"With research indicating that nearly 60% of student achievement can be
attributed to principal and teacher quality, our schools not only need
principal training and hiring to be highly selective, but also need school
systems, states, and the federal government to redefine the principalship to
focus on teachers and students," said Ben Fenton Co-Founder and Chief Strategy
and Knowledge Officer at New Leaders for New Schools.
By training and supporting principals in those focus areas, New Leaders for
New Schools' graduates have demonstrated positive results: K-8 schools led by
a New Leaders principal for two or more years are nearly twice as likely as
others in their district to make breakthrough achievement gains. Still,
achievement results for New Leader-led high schools do not yet outpace the
results from other high schools in their district.
"Positive outcomes from New Leaders and other highly effective principal
recruitment and training programs will be indispensable but not sufficient to
drive breakthrough achievement gains at scale," explains Fenton. "Principal
training programs need to learn about what is working and use that information
to improve their programs."
To that end, the New Leaders for New Schools' report builds on the
organization's own research and recommends that the federal government,
states, school systems, and philanthropic funders adopt a definition of
principal effectiveness that includes gains in student achievement, increased
teacher effectiveness, and implementation of the specific principal actions
proven to improve whole schools. Increasing teacher effectiveness, the report
explains, requires that principals be able to frequently evaluate teacher
growth, support staff in their professional development, build strong
leadership teams, dismiss teachers who are consistently low-performing, and
create a pipeline of quality talent.
ABOUT NEW LEADERS FOR NEW SCHOOLS
New Leaders for New Schools mission ensures high academic achievement for
every student by attracting and preparing outstanding leaders and supporting
the performance of the urban public schools they lead, at scale. It has
partnerships in Baltimore, the Bay Area of California, Charlotte, Chicago,
Memphis, Milwaukee, Greater New Orleans, New York City, Prince George's County
(MD), and Washington, D.C. Since 2000, New Leaders has selected and trained
over 640 outstanding leaders from over 10,000 applicants. New Leaders for New
Schools has been recognized for the last 5 years as the highest rated social
enterprise and nonprofit in the nation by Fast Company magazine, and was the
only nonprofit partnership chosen as Harvard University's 2009 Innovations in
American Government Award winner.
SOURCE New Leaders for New Schools
Margot Lowenstein of New Leaders for New Schools, +1-646-792-1054,
mlowenstein@nlns.org
