Leaders from six urban school districts gathered with educational thought leaders on April 28th and 29th at Baruch College in New York City as part of the Wallace Foundation’s $75 million Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI). The NYC Leadership Academy facilitated this and five previous convenings with a grant from the Wallace Foundation, and has played an instrumental role in creating and managing a vibrant professional learning community (PLC) that provides a forum for sharing effective practices and for developing action plans using research-based methods.

Districts represented in this initiative serve thousands of low-income students and include: Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina; Denver in Colorado; Gwinnett County in Georgia; Hillsborough County in Florida; New York City; and Prince George’s County in Maryland.

Launched in 2011, the goals of the Wallace Foundation’s PPI are to assist participating school districts in developing larger corps of well-prepared school principals and to ultimately evaluate whether this comprehensive initiative improved student achievement across each district, especially in the highest need schools.

At the recent convening, members of the PPI PLC worked collaboratively to develop solutions to the challenges districts face in improving their leadership pipelines. Discussion included using the principal pipeline to drive districtwide change, recruitment and selection for principal preparation programs, and increasing time for school leaders to support teaching and learning.

The NYC Leadership Academy is honored to support the Wallace Foundation in facilitating such rich and thoughtful discussions that provide district leaders with the tools they need to successfully create principal pipelines and to further the Foundation’s commitment to high-quality school leadership nationwide.

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