The NYC Leadership Academy holds all program participants to rigorous school leadership performance standards that are set forth in our Leadership Performance Standards Matrix. The Leadership Matrix, which aligns to national, state and New York City Department of Education school leadership standards, identifies twelve dimensions that reflect the attributes of transformational and instructional leaders:
- personal behavior
- resilience
- communication
- focus on student performance
- situational problem-solving
- learning
- accountability for professional practice
- supervision
- leadership development
- climate and culture
- time, task and project management
- technology.
In our Aspiring Principals Program (APP), these performance standards guide participant selection, and are used to measure curricular scope, assignments, program advancement, interventions and the comprehensive evaluation of each participant. To graduate from the Aspiring Principal Program, each participant must demonstrate competency in all 12 dimensions. In our support and leadership development programs for early-career principals, we use the Leadership Performance Planning Worksheet (LPPW), an instrument that is based on the Leadership Matrix. Designed in collaboration with the Wallace Foundation’s national Leadership Issues Group, the LPPW helps principals identify, organize around, and effectively lead instructional improvement in their schools.