As we enter our second decade as an organization, we are building off what we have learned to embark on exciting new work that will make our program more scalable and drive even better outcomes for high-need students. We have designed a new Emerging Leaders Program to increase leadership capacity at school sites and serve as a pipeline to the Aspiring Principals Program. We have also improved the support we provide our early-career New Leader Principals by establishing the Principal Institute, a professional learning community that leverages the expertise of our New Leaders community. The three-stage model—from Emerging Leaders to Aspiring Principals to Principal Institute—will recruit, select, train and support transformative principals for the Bay Area’s most underserved schools.
Emerging Leaders Program
“All students can excel academically; the innate ability to learn thrives in every child.”
Kareem Weaver, Cohort 9
We are partnering with Oakland public schools to offer the Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) for the first time in the 2011-2012 academic year. This new program will provide instructional leadership training to a select group of educators working in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and several Bay Area charter schools. ELP is a pipeline to our Aspiring Principals Program and is intended for teachers, coaches, assistant principals and other school leaders who are two years away from the principalship.
For more information about the Emerging Leaders Program in the Bay Area, please contact Yanira Canizales.
Learn more about the Emerging Leaders Program >>
Aspiring Principals Program
The Aspiring Principals Program (APP) is an intensive one-year, full-time, paid program to prepare future principals. The core of the program is the Residency Year, where each participant serves alongside a Mentor Principal in a high-need Bay Area school. Residents are charged with improving student achievement and teacher practice.
Bay Area New Leaders staff members work with local public school leadership to place Residents in schools for their training year. At the conclusion of this year-long training, Residents who successfully complete the program are eligible for an administrative credential. Once certified, Residents seek principal placements in district or charter schools with the assistance of the Bay Area staff.
Principal Institute
Upon successful completion of their Residency, first-year New Leader Principals enter the final stage of the training program: the Principal Institute. First-year principal support begins with entry planning, during which New Leaders use our diagnostic toolkit to assess their schools and pinpoint key areas on which they should focus. From there, they develop a data-driven, school-specific action plan for the school year.
All Principal Institute participants engage in a professional development and support program that includes monthly sessions with other early-career New Leader Principals. Trained facilitators with extensive principal experience lead these sessions.
All New Leaders also receive support from their local and national New Leader networks. Our staff and the Bay Area Cross-Cohort Advisory Board (made up entirely of New Leaders) foster continued exchange within this professional learning community through meetings and targeted communications. We believe that a stronger, formalized network of support will increase New Leaders’ mutual reliance and connection, ultimately increasing principal retention, student achievement and our own organizational sustainability.
Eligibility Requirements
We require all Bay Area ELP and APP applicants to have:
- A bachelor’s degree.
- A California teaching credential or an out-of-state teaching credential. For APP participants, out-of-state credentials must be transferred to California before a participant can be placed as a Resident. Consult the California Commission on Teaching Credentialing for more information by clicking here.
- A CBEST score report.
Application Process
- ELP applicants must be nominated by their school’s principal, a senior district or charter management organization member or a New Leader at another school.
- APP applicants must apply online through our national Admissions Process.
We encourage and welcome your involvement in New Leaders. For more information about the Bay Area programs, please contact Ann Zhao at azhao@newleaders.org. To support our work and be a part of transforming Bay Area schools, please make a gift today.
