Teaching & Leadership

Every single day, approximately 75,000 teachers and their school leaders work tirelessly to make it possible for 1.1 million students to receive an excellent education. By lifting up and celebrating our teachers, developing leaders at every level, and equipping front-line educators with opportunities to hone their craft, we can ensure each student is firmly on their path to college and career.

Through key initiatives, the Fund for Public Schools works to secure and attract philanthropic resources to support the NYC Department of Education’s (DOE) top priority of accelerating learning and instruction for every student, by building and sustaining a pipeline of high-quality teachers and school leaders.

Empowering Teachers through Continuous Learning

The Fund for Public Schools is proud to partner with the DOE to build the capacity of educators to accelerate learning and instruction for all students, and to scale successful practices across the City.

In the 2019-20 school year, as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Networks for School Improvement (NSI), the DOE announced it will receive a $13 million grant over five years through The Fund to strengthen instruction and improve academic outcomes for multilingual learners in grades 6-8. The DOE will use this grant to deepen the DOE’s Instructional Leadership Framework (ILF), designed to help leaders across the system create supportive learning environments and set rigorous expectations for every student.

Launching with 20 schools in the 2020-21 school year, the DOE’s NSI grant will expand to serve 45 middle schools by 2024. Through this work, The Fund will continue to collaborate with the DOE’s Continuous Learning team, within the Chief Academic Office and the Division of Teaching and Learning. The DOE will support teacher-leaders in problem-solving through inquiry cycles and in working as Instructional Networks to identify, test, and elevate solutions to serve multilingual learners across the City. Throughout, students will be supported in content mastery and language development through engaging texts, rich discussion, regular writing, and rigorous instruction in academic language.

This expansion builds on work that began through The Fund in 2016 first piloted in 17 schools in South Brooklyn to develop instructional strategies for supporting multilingual learners in grades K-8. Through this initial Gates Foundation grant, participating schools saw an 86 percent increase in the proportion of Multilingual Learners scoring Proficient or Advanced on the New York State ELA exam. Additionally, the DOE’s Continuous Learning Team developed the Improvement Science Handbook, a resource designed for schools seeking to embed continuous learning in their school. 

This work is funded with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Supporting High Quality Teachers for All

New York City, as the largest district in the country, must hire approximately 6,000 new teachers each year. In order for aspiring educators to be hired and be ready to thrive on “day one,” they need meaningful and hands-on opportunities to practice skills with students in our City’s public schools. In fact, research has linked strong clinical training for teachers to higher levels of student achievement, teacher retention, and teachers’ sense of preparedness when they enter the classroom.

The Fund for Public Schools is partnering with the DOE to build a sustainable, clinically-rich teacher preparation pipeline in New York City. This three-year grant is shifting our City’s approach to teacher preparation by partnering with institutions of higher education to provide more robust, hands-on clinical experience as part of their teacher preparation programs. The goal: to dramatically increase the number of new teachers who, upon hiring, are already experienced and ready to meet the demands of a New York City classroom. Funding for this work is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Strengthening the Leadership Pipeline

As the DOE works to develop high quality leaders at all levels of the system, effective principal leadership is a crucial lever to ensuring that every child receives an excellent education.

Each year there are approximately 150 principal and 400 assistant principal vacancies. The City’s unmatched scale demands a robust leadership pipeline made up of a large pool of well-prepared candidates, combined with rich opportunities to support the ongoing growth and learning of leaders across the system.

In 2011, the Wallace Foundation launched the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI), a national, $75 million effort to test how urban school districts and their principal training providers could better train and support effective novice principals and assistant principals, with a focus on improving student outcomes in low-performing schools. As one of Wallace’s six district partners, from 2011-19, New York City dramatically expanded its leadership training capacity through PPI. With over $12.5 million in support from the Wallace Foundation, The Fund and the DOE drew on existing school-based talent to create a strong, sustainable school leadership pipeline, resulting in significant talent development within the DOE’s existing principal, assistant principal, and teacher pool.   

As a result of this philanthropic investment and collaboration, PPI enabled the City to develop and launch multiple targeted and rigorous leadership development programs – for teachers, assistant principals, and principals – designed to ensure the DOE always has strong leaders who are ready to drive school and system-wide change, from teacher leaders to senior district leaders.

Celebrating Outstanding Teachers

The Big Apple Awards are a citywide recognition program celebrating the dedication, rigor, and community spirit of New York City public school teachers. Last year, out of a record-high 7,100 nominations, Big Apple Awards were given to 17 classroom teachers. Big Apple nominees are reviewed based on their ability to demonstrate exceptional success in three key competencies aligned with the Framework for Great Schools: impacting student learning, demonstrating strong instructional practice, and contributing to their school community.

The Fund for Public Schools supports the Big Apple Awards through partnerships and donations. For the eighth year, The Fund will partner with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts – which works in collaboration with the DOE on several arts education programs – to sponsor the Arts Education Award. Additionally, the Physical Education Award will be funded for a fourth consecutive year by New York Road Runners, a longtime DOE partner that has provided free youth fitness and wellness programs in NYC schools for 20 years, annually serving more than 125,000 children across the City.

As a partner to the DOE, the Fund for Public Schools facilitates promising, outcome-driven initiatives through private philanthropic partnerships, which have the potential to make significant impact in the lives of our students and the teachers who inspire them every day. If you are interested in joining our ever-growing list of supporters helping to ensure every student gets the excellent education they deserve, join us.