The shift to the Common Core at the Lazaro Cardenas Elementary School, a pre-K to third grade school in a predominantly Latino area in southwest Chicago, rested on instructional improvement efforts Jeremy Feiwell initiated five years earlier in 2006, when he became Cardenas's principal. Feiwell knew from his years as a teacher at Cardenas that…

At KIPP Comienza Community Prep--an elementary school in Huntington Park, California, where 94 percent of students qualify for free lunch, and more than 60 percent are English language learners--most kindergarteners start out well below pre-reading levels. In 2015, however, just a few years after these students walked in the school doors unable to…

A principal's job, first and foremost, is to diagnose their school's needs and match them to effective principal actions and school practices that drive student success. Successful principals use their diagnosis to build an action plan that pushes their school--and student achievement--to the next level. New Leaders developed the Urban Excellence…