New Leaders, New Funding

Campus Report ^ | March 18, 2008 | Bethany Stotts

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New Leaders, New Funding?

by: Bethany Stotts, March 18, 2008

A new, experimental policy discussed this week at the Center for American Progress (CAP) suggests reforming schools from the top down through engaged, talented principals....

The program currently has a 20% success rate. “ 20%—you might say this is not an impressive number and it is not nearly what we want it to be, but nonetheless 20% of schools led by our New Leaders principals are making breakthrough gains in academic achievement for high poverty kids. ” said Schnur. “Now 80% aren’t, and that’s of immense concern to us, but the fact is, we now can look and learn at what's happening in those 20% of schools,” he optimistically asserted....

Some of the other panel speakers hinted at a surge in government funding needed to advance this agenda, even though it is in its beginning stages. “ I think it’s also hard to overestimate the extent to which hours and hours of a principal’s time every day....and if we really want the principals to be instructional leaders and for that to be the core aspect of the job, it may be that we need to give them more support on the business side,” said Byron Auguste....

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) expressed his interest in promoting this still-theoretical approach within the federal government. He said "So what do we do at the federal level?....can’t we have a national academy?...Isn’t there some way that we can build the capacity into these school leaders so that they can get these kinds of results so they’ll understand how to work with the faculty......

In other words, isn’t there some way of annexing this function from the current non-profit and making it a federal responsibility?...