BY  MELANIE ULLE

High-performing leaders typically lead high-performing schools. Look around, and you’ll see this truth in action everywhere and (unfortunately) the inverse. Your kid’s patchworked elementary school with chronic teacher turnover and messy classrooms is usually not run by an exceptional director. This principle applies to any sandwich shop, church, boutique, airline and even to the infamous Fyre Festival. 

Sadly, schools and districts, much like nonprofits, tend to reward excellence with more work and little to no additional pay. That’s the misguided story we tell ourselves in the social sector: service for service’s sake. The truth is when we push leaders too hard, without proper compensation, support, and space for planning, they inevitably break. What that means for us as parents and community members is that we see school principals who are doing bang-up work with outstanding outcomes leaving their jobs 

Highly effective principals receive little professional development, recognition, or peer networking. As a result, our MVPs often lose their passion, burn out and depart. Research shows that effective principals who remain in their schools deliver exceedingly better student outcomes, so it’s requisite that schools retain quality principals and build a pipeline of exceptional future leaders.

Recent tragedies in Denver Public Schools reveal the extent to which administrators are tasked with a litany of responsibilities and burdens that exceed our rational understanding of what the role of a school leader should be. If you haven’t caught that headline, you need to buy a newspaper or turn on the news. It’s been a year, to say the least.

This program works hard to improve large urban public-school systems by lifting and inspiring high-quality principals and promising school leaders with advanced professional development and recognition. Cahn Fellows’ programs foster a community of educators and administrators who ultimately influence the outcomes for inner-city students in their education and their approach to life. 

As David Brooks shared in the NY Times, “Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto studied 180 schools across nine states and concluded, ‘We have not found a single case of a school improving its student achievement record in the absence of talented leadership.”

Since 2003, 1,144 principals and aspiring leaders have participated in the Cahn Fellows Programs. Currently, there are 65 principals and 65 allies in ten cities throughout the nation participating in the Cahn Fellows Cohort for the 2022-23 session. In Colorado, there are 7 DPS participants. The population served to date is 350,000 students.

Studies show that attitude markedly impacts physical and mental health, the ability to achieve goals, and to lead and influence others. The Cahn Fellows Programs are designed to change the outlook and performance of leaders across the country. Each participant’s success is Cahn’s success. As demonstrated by the before and after results of those participating in the Principals Programs, as well as in the continued success of participants making news headlines and trailblazing in education, Cahn continues to see astounding results.

Self-assessments are given to participants throughout the program and the results reveal that fellows begin the program with overwhelmingly negative characteristics associated with their jobs and at the conclusion of the program, the characteristics are reversed and overwhelmingly positive. The shift in outlook changes by 50-75%! These results are staggering and reinforce Cahn’s strong belief that the nation needs to provide consistent and structured support to administrators for the good of its students and families. In terms of program satisfaction, 94% of Cahn Fellows say the program was the best or one of the best personal development programs they’ve taken. While 86% of participants said that Cahn Fellows improved their leadership skills “a great deal.”

Another, and probably the most important key measurement of the program’s success is principal longevity. The average tenure of a Cahn principal (12.5 years) is double that of a principal who does not participate in the program (six years). 

Cahn Fellows continue to thrive after the program in their schools and in their communities. Sheldon Reynolds was the 2022 Colorado Outstanding Elementary Principal of the Year and David Banks is now the Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education.

Now is the time to invest in our district’s brightest and best leaders. To learn more about Cahn Fellows, please visit www.cahnfellowsprograms.org.