New Leaders

According to its mission statement, New Leaders is a non-profit organization that aims to ensure high academic achievement for students in poverty and students of color by training school leaders to drive improvement in schools with low test scores and high poverty rates. It also aims to advance policies and practices that allow these leaders to reach their goals.

New Leaders has developed partnerships with public school systems[8] and charter schools in selected cities, where participants in three job-embedded leadership development programs (Leading Instruction, Emerging Leaders, and Aspiring Principals) are placed into leadership-position vacancies in elementary, middle, and high schools, in some cases through external recruitment but more often by identifying strong candidates within the partner district/network. The organization relies on nominations to help identify potential candidates, who must then complete a multi-step application process, with emphasis on selecting experienced professionals who demonstrate a variety of strengths, including leadership and communication skills and a deep belief that all children are capable of high academic achievement. Aspiring Principals participants are provided with hands-on training through a one-year residency in an urban public school, where they are mentored by a veteran principal[9] and expert coaches from New Leaders' staff. Following completion of the residency, the participant applies for an open position.[10] When applicants enroll in the New Leaders principal training program, they are required to a make at least a three-year commitment to serving as a principal or assistant principal in these districts, and they continue to receive support and guidance from New Leaders once they accept a position.[11] They also receive one to two years of induction support after being appointed as a new principal in their own school.

Starting in 2001, according to New Leaders' website, it has broadened its program offerings aiming to reach more students and expand its scope to include teacher leaders, academic coaches, and assistant principals through its Emerging Leaders[12] and Leading Instruction[13] programs. Like Aspiring Principals, those programs emphasize on-the-job learning and coaching during the training year.

In addition to these application-based programs, New Leaders operates three other programs in partnership with school districts/charter networks: Transforming Teams,[14] Principal Institute,[15] and Principal Supervisors.[16] New Leaders also produces research on effective school leadership and advocates for policies and practices that support school leaders.[17]

The organization is funded by private-sector contributions, public sources and philanthropists, with major supporters including The Boeing Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wallace Foundation, among others.[18]

In its first eight years, 95% of participants in the New Leaders program went on to hold leadership positions in urban schools.[6] The RAND Corporation evaluates every principal from the New Leaders program using precise metrics on what improvements students have made and how results in New Leader placement schools compare with other schools. At a substantial majority of these schools, the preliminary findings have shown that there is marked improvement.[9] The RAND Corporation data shows schools led by New Leader principals have made gains at a higher rate than the national average, and their dropout rate has declined.[2][19] A report published by New Leaders identified five key factors that it stated appear to be essential in the task of quickly turning around poorly performing public schools. According to the report, principals who have overseen dramatic student improvements have tended to focus on instituting achievement-based learning and teaching, improving the school culture, placing the right people in the right roles, managing the facilities and operations properly, and leading by personal example.[20]

New Leaders measures the impact on student performance through comparison of their principals' results to other schools in their systems to assess whether students in New Leaders' schools outperform similar students.[19] It found that graduation rates in New Leaders' high schools are substantially higher than district graduation rates.[2] New Leaders also focuses on the performance of the program in transforming participating schools, and cites results showing that New Leader schools were twice as likely to have significantly improved student proficiency test scores in 2009, compared with other schools.[19]

In 2009, New Leaders received an "Innovations in American Government" award from the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.[2][21]