New Leaders for New Schools

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Within the next five years, 40% of the nation's 93,000 principals are expected to retire. School districts are already feeling the crunch, many conducting extensive searches to fill the shoes of outgoing principals. School districts have found principal recruitment difficult during the last several years despite a 33% raise, inked last year, boosting the average salary to slightly less than $95,000. Other reasons for the decline of principal applicants include increased academic standards and an emphasis on holding principals responsible for the quality of their schools. To help cope with the worsening nationwide shortage of school administrators, a nonprofit group will offer a program to train new ones.

New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit organization based in New York City will recruit and train teachers and leaders from the private sector with previous teaching experience to work in public schools in New York and Chicago over the next 10 years. The program will allow participating principals to spend one year training under a veteran principal. New Leaders for New Schools also allows potential administrators the luxury of becoming a principal without having to pay for conventional education. They can then apply for jobs as principals of their own school, where they will receive two years of intensive oversight.

The idea for this method of training principals is the brainchild of Jonathon Schnur, former education advisor to former Vice President Al Gore, and a group of students and faculty members at Harvard University's schools of education and business. New Leaders for New Schools trains principals in management as well as education. The program helps principals in setting up budgets, training and evaluating teachers, and working with parents.

"You can't become a doctor until you have had the chance to practice what you have learned in the classroom under the supervision of an experienced doctor," Mr. Schnur said. "The best way to become a principal is not only to observe what a principal does but to practice and work under the supervision of an experienced and outstanding principal."