Leading Educators

Leading Educators has received a $1 million commitment from New Profit, a national nonprofit venture philanthropy, to be made over the next four years. This gift will support Leading Educator’s work across the nation to ensure that all students have access to great teachers, especially in urban schools.

Bob Searle

Leading Educators partners with schools and districts to maximize the leadership development of highly effective teachers. Our goal is to bolster the talent pipeline via identifying and training strong potential teacher leaders and, in turn, increase student achievement and develop the skills and sustainability of teachers on our teacher leaders' teams.

We’re looking for our first VP of Storytelling & Development in Leading Educators’ 5-year history. I’ve been reflecting on what this role will mean for our organization, why we believe diversity and equity is so important and why I am excited about where we’re headed.

• This is our moment to tell our story + shape the narrative.  We’ve proven that when given access to skill development and the right leadership roles, teacher leaders increase student achievement, remain in their schools longer than their peers and develop leadership skills that ignite whole school transformation. Our new VP of Storytelling will re-imagine our story, help us tell it and then ensure it quickly spreads throughout the world.
• The choice between diversity + excellence is false. Diversity is the very means to excellence. I still have conversations with colleagues in the field who are not talking about the business case for diversity and equity. The facts are that diverse teams perform at higher rates than non-diverse teams and the research that shows women often outperform men yet women are not represented in senior leadership. Without diversity and equity, Leading Educators cannot grow from 1,000 Teacher Leaders to 10,000; from serving 200 schools to 2 million students or move from raising $6 million to $20 million over the next three years.
  

If you browse our website, you might note that there are fewer senior leaders of color. You might interpret this fact to mean we do not think a senior leader of color can be successful here. It does not. It means we have significant work to do and we will not shy away from it. We are happy to talk to you personally about what we’re doing to work on this.

Studies also show that men often apply for jobs when they only meet 60 percent of the qualifications for a senior role. Women wait until they meet 100 percent. Please do not wait. Please put yourself and others forward.

• We’re just getting started. Ninety percent (90%) of principals with a Fellow said that our teachers have had a positive impact on their school. In 5 years, we’ve expanded into new regions and nearly 100% of our Fellows remain in education and continue to assume greater leadership and impact within their schools.

Our inaugural VP of Storytelling & Development arrives to a learning organization whose intent is to expand its impact.

To learn more, reach out to Ify Offor Walker or me directly.

Here’s to the next phase and seeing you aboard the teacher leader rocket ship!

Dear Leading Educators team, colleagues, and friends: 

Dr. Pamela Puryear

As you can probably imagine, we are beyond ecstatic that Dr. Puryear is offering her experience, expertise, and network to our work at Leading Educators.
Regards, Jonas Chartock 
Chief Executive Officer 
Leading Educators
www.leadingeducators.org  

Today the RAND Corporation released the first stage of a multi-year study on the Leading Educators Fellowship program. This initial report examines the effects of our Fellowship programs in Kansas City and New Orleans on leadership growth, student achievement, and teacher retention. 

Program to Improve School Outcomes and Student Achievement Shows Early Signs of Success

FOR RELEASE

Tuesday
August 11, 2015

A program intended to boost student achievement by providing teachers two years of professional development, including formal training sessions and meetings with a leadership coach, is showing early signs of success, according to a new RAND Corporation report. The program also includes the mentoring of other teachers by those receiving these more-intensive efforts.

The fellowship program created by Leading Educators, a national nonprofit based in New Orleans, is showing promising results on student achievement, according to a preliminary evaluation of the effort. The program is unique because it focuses on middle-career teachers, while other efforts typically focus on new teachers, and offers leadership development for classroom teachers.

The fellows participate in a two-year training program consisting of a series of professional development sessions, school visits and meetings with a leadership coach. Fellows can be teachers as well as school administrators. In addition, fellows select other teachers to mentor at their own school. The teachers mentored by the fellows participate in meetings and workshops throughout the school year.

The findings are based on the 2011–12 through 2013–14 school years for fellows and the teachers they mentor located in New Orleans and Kansas City, Mo. Over the study period, there were 255 fellows and 916 teachers mentored. The RAND study focused on teachers that researchers were able to match to state databases for student assessment test scores, which included 75 fellows and 438 mentored teachers.

“Since the leader development program may influence students of the fellows or the other teachers they mentor, our team examined achievement outcomes from students across this wider group,” said Kata Mihaly, the report's lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

These early findings of the program are mixed, but suggest that the program shows promise in improving student achievement. Fellows who taught mathematics in New Orleans had a statistically significant positive effect on student achievement. However, the analysis did not find statistically significant findings for other subjects taught by fellows in New Orleans or Kansas City. Teachers mentored by fellows had a positive impact on student mathematics and social studies achievement in New Orleans.

The analysis also examined whether teachers are more likely to stay in the same school or stay teaching in high-poverty schools after participating in the program. Program teachers remained in high-poverty schools at rates that were similar to or higher than that of other teachers in the district.

Researchers note the current results are based on few years of data and on a small sample of teachers, and results may change when there are more fellows and mentored teachers included in future studies. Prior to the evaluation being completed, Leading Educators expanded the fellowship program, with opportunities to participate in Memphis, Tenn., and Washington, D.C.

Support for this research was provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

The report, “Examining the Early Impacts of the Leading Educators Fellowship on Student Achievement and Teacher Retention,” is available at www.rand.org. Other authors of the study are Benjamin Master and Cate Yoon.

This research was conducted by RAND Education, a division of the RAND Corporation. Its mission is to bring accurate data and careful, objective analysis to the national debate on education policy.

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