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Over four years, Janice Crawford intends to hire and train 40 Memphis City Schools principals whose mettle will be tested in ways she describes as "intense, very intense."
"We're looking for people who demonstrate relentless drive," said Crawford, executive director of New Leaders for New Schools in Memphis.
In addition to drive, the principals must have three years of classroom teaching experience and a master's degree.
Crawford's six-person team stretched its search for the right candidates geographically, and this year's Memphis class of eight principals for the first time includes more outsiders than locals: Two are from Mississippi and three others come from Baltimore, New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.
Recruiting outside the city is part of the district's resolve to cross-pollinate its principal ranks with newcomers.
"We wanted to take advantage of a national network because we were hoping it would produce some newcomers," said Roderick Richmond, city schools chief of operations.
Crawford says the kind of teacher it takes to dramatically improve student test scores is not interested in working for a weak principal.
"The district is recruiting and training outstanding teachers, but they will not stay unless they are working for outstanding leaders."
Today, 20 percent of city schools have a NLNS-trained principal or assistant principal, which includes 38 principals and 11 assistant principals.
In June, Supt. Kriner Cash changed the principals at 33 schools, a higher number than usual as he bears down on schools where students aren't showing sufficient progress.
The expectations are part of the new accountability, Richmond says.
"The principal's job is becoming more and more demanding," he said. "Like many other districts, we are starting to see more turnover as people leave or retire."
New Leaders, the New York-based nonprofit group that judges performance on test score gains in the schools where its principals work, came to Memphis in 2004 with support from the Hyde Family Foundations and others. Memphis is one of nine cities, including New York and Chicago, where NLNS works.
The 7 percent of candidates nationally who make the cut in NLNS programs get the equivalent of a one-year, $90,000 professional development package, including a month at the organization's summer training camp at Boston University and training as an assistant principal in a city school.
They work four days with a mentor principal and attend NLNS training on the fifth day each week.
Vincent Hunter, principal at Whitehaven High, has mentored four NLNS assistants, including one so talented that he was "promoted" early in the year to another school.
"What I like about them is that they are really skilled at disaggregating (analyzing) data and making data-driven decisions," Hunter said. "You can't make decisions on what you think or how you feel. It needs to be on what the data says."
Last fall, the school district committed financially to improving the quality of its middle and high school principals, pledging $700,000 a year from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for four years.
It costs $2.5 million a year to run the Memphis program.
"The (remaining) $1.8 million we have to raise locally or nationally," Crawford said. "By investing $700,000, you can see Memphis City Schools are really leveraging their investment."
