New Leaders: Giving Tuesday
What if every child attended a great public school?
What if there were a team of leaders in each school with the skills to support academic excellence for ALL students?
What if these leaders already exist–and they need your support?
This holiday season, I hope you will join me in supporting New Leaders, a national non-profit where I am a proud staff member, as part of Giving Tuesday, a national movement beginning December 3rd to encourage people to give back during the holidays.
We at New Leaders recruit outstanding educators from across the country and develop them into transformational principals and leaders for students in high-poverty schools.
In Chicago, one such outstanding leader is Michelle Navarre of Polaris Charter Academy. When Michelle opened Polaris as principal in 2007, the school served 95% low-income students, just 8% of whom were reading at grade level. Winner as a classroom teacher of a prestigious Golden Apple Award from the Golden Apple Foundation, Michelle prioritized raising the academic bar and supporting her teachers to implement a rigorous academic program at the school. Polaris co-founder Roel Vivit, a fellow New Leader and also a Golden Apple Award winner, serves as assistant principal, creating a strong school leadership team that is on the same page in their support of students. This has paid off: Polaris students’ ISAT reading scores have increased 34 percentage points, exceeding Chicago Public Schools’ average in reading, math and science. This year, 42 out of 49 students in Polaris’ first graduating class of 8th graders qualify for selective enrollment high schools, reflecting how dramatically these students’ lives have changed as a result of their experiences at Polaris.
Every student in Chicago deserves a Michelle in his or her school. The great news is that we have dozens more just like her: this school year, we are training 60 teacher leaders and 28 future principals like Michelle right here in Chicago with the same grit and determination to see their students succeed no matter what. And they need your support.
I hope you will support our efforts this holiday season by investing in training more leaders like Michelle. Any amount will make a difference. I believe that supporting education is the most important thing we can do for our children and for our country, and that making sure every school has a great leader is the best way to start.
I deeply appreciate any contribution you can make to support New Leaders and help change the lives of kids here in Chicago and across the nation.
Don't forget to donate! (sent December 6)
Please remember to donate to this organization that is doing amazing things for students!
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.
Tell Larie why you this cause!