Leading Educators

Leading Educators develops teacher-leaders in order to raise student achievement and retain talented educators in high-need schools. We aim to ensure that public education successfully trains its middle managers, thus retaining our best teachers and bolstering the pipeline of future principals.

Our flagship program is a two-year Fellowship program where teacher-leaders engage in frequent leadership development sessions, and strengthen their ability to coach and provide feedback to other teachers. Results from the 2011–2012 school year show that students of teams led by New Orleans Fellows grew 12 times more than their counterparts across the district while students of teams led by Kansas City Fellows grew 5 times more than their counterparts across the district.

Leading Educators also offers Strategic Support Initiatives (SSI), customized teacher leadership development consulting to districts, charter management organizations (CMOs), and non-profit organizations. This contract-based work may include delivery of training modules; teacher leader recruitment, selection, and retention consulting; train-the-trainer projects; and evaluation consulting. For example, this year Leading Educators partnered with Houston Independent School District to implement a Teacher-Leader Pathways pilot for over 60 teacher-leaders across 20 schools.

Leading Educators has trained over 160 teacher-leaders in programs in New Orleans, Kansas City, and Houston, and is currently launching programming in Washington, D.C. Building on success in these regions, Leading Educators is assembling an ambitious team to expand the program nationally. The work is fast-paced and entrepreneurial; the expansion model aims to serve 12 regions by 2016.