New Leaders: Giving Tuesday
New York City / Newark team
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a team of leaders in every school ready to lead students to success?
What if these leaders already exist–and they need your support?
I hope you will join me in supporting New Leaders, a national non-profit where I am a proud staff member. We at New Leaders recruit outstanding educators and develop them into transformational principals and leaders for students in high-poverty schools.
One such leader is Dr. Eric Blake, the principal of Science, Technology and Research (STAR) Early College High School. Since Eric became the principal in 2008, he has focused relentlessly on ensuring that his students graduate from high school prepared to be successful in college. By the end of students’ tenure at STAR, they are equipped with not only a diploma, but also a substantial number of college credits that will prepare them to enter college as advanced and confident learners.
The hard work of Eric and his staff is evident: STAR has had a graduation rate of over 90% for the last three years, including 98.6% in 2012 – far above the city average of 65%. STAR is also one of the few schools in its district that is closing the achievement gap in reading and math.
However, when reflecting on his success Eric states, “the 98.6% grad rate is not good enough. We need to get to 100%.”
Every student deserves an Eric in his or her school. We are proud of the more than 1,600 New Leaders we have trained serving over 350,000 children in high-need neighborhoods across the country. But there are many more children in need of a great leader. By 2020, New Leaders will develop 3,000 leaders to prepare 1 million students for success in college, careers, and citizenship.
Our New Leaders need your support. This holiday season, I hope you will support New Leaders by investing in training more leaders like Eric.
Help fund the training, development, and support of transformational school leaders
New Leaders trains tomorrow’s principals. The people who join this program share a deep belief that all students can achieve at high levels – that demography is not destiny for children in low-income communities. Your gift will support New leaders so they can more adeptly transform underperforming public schools and make a real difference in the lives of students from low-income communities.
About New Leaders
New Leaders seeks to ensure high academic achievement for all children—especially students in poverty and students of color—by developing transformational school leaders and advancing the policies and practices that allow great leaders to succeed.
Why focus on great leaders? School principals are the driving force behind school improvement. One outstanding teacher isn’t enough; students require multiple years of effective teachers to reach academic excellence, especially if they have fallen behind. Strong principals have the skills to support their existing staff to become outstanding teachers and to keep the strongest educators in their schools.
New Leaders’ leadership training begins with our Emerging Leaders Program, which builds a pipeline of promising future school leaders by growing the abilities of talented educators over the course of a year to lead other adults in raising student achievement.
Many Emerging Leaders go on to join our signature Aspiring Principals Program, a rigorous, one-year residency through which we train highly motivated, results-oriented individuals to strengthen our most struggling schools. To ensure that we get the best leaders into schools, we also identify promising talent through a national admissions process.
After their residency, we support our leaders in their critical first years on the job through the Principal Institute, which employs professional learning communities and strategic one-on-one coaching for one or two years to ensure our new principals—and their students—are set up for success. And with our new Leadership Practice Improvement program, we train current school principals and their leadership teams in best practices to raise student achievement.
Tell Daniel why you
this cause!