School Leadership Program
Grant: School Leadership Program
Agency: U.S. Department of Education
Division: Office of Innovation and Improvement
Deadline: Notice of Intent to Apply is due June 7, 2013; Final applications are due July 8, 2013.
Description: The Secretary of Education has set an ambitious goal of turning around the nation's 5,000 lowest-achieving schools over the next five years. Consistent with this goal, the School Leadership program is designed to assist high-need local educational agencies (LEAs) in recruiting and training principals and assistant principals. Funded activities include:
- Providing financial incentives to aspiring new principals.
- Providing stipends to principals who mentor new principals.
- Carrying out professional development programs in instructional leadership and management.
- Providing incentives that are appropriate for teachers or individuals from other fields who want to become principals and that are effective in retaining new principals.
The goal of the SLP is to increase student achievement by investing in innovative projects that prepare aspiring principals, and provide professional development to current principals (including assistant principals) to foster mastery of core leadership skills. In an effort to achieve this goal, the department is particularly interested in funding projects that address the following two invitational priorities:
- Building Leadership Capacity includes projects that implement professional development for current principals (including assistant principals), to (1) help them master essential school leadership skills, such as evaluating and providing feedback to teachers, analyzing student data, developing school leadership teams and creating a position school environment; and (2) enable them to support instruction in their schools aligned to college-and career-ready standards.
- Supporting Practices and Strategies for Which There is Moderate Evidence of Effectiveness includes projects, that provide principal preparation, professional development, or both that are supported by moderate evidence of effectiveness.
Fit for public broadcasting: Stations are no longer eligible to apply directly to this program, but would make natural partners on a project proposed by an LEA. In 2009, total funding for this program was $33,483,463. Approximately $18 million, or 55 percent, was awarded to governments and LEAs, with nonprofits coming in second (19 percent) and institutions of higher education (IHEs) third (16 percent). In most cases, lead applicants recruited several partners to carry out various components of the program. Public broadcasters may have a particular advantage in carrying out professional development programs for principals through distance learning technologies.
Eligibility: High-need LEAs; consortia of high-need LEAs; and partnerships of high-need LEAs, nonprofit organizations, and institutions of higher education are eligible to apply.
Anticipated funding: An estimated $14.8 million is set aside for approximately 14-17 awards, with an estimate range of $750,000 - $1 million per grant. The project period is for up to 60 months.
How to Apply: DOE strongly encourages each applicant to provide notice of their intent to apply by June 7, 2013. This can be completed by sending a short email message to Tyra Steward indicating your intent to submit an applicant for funding. The email need not include information regarding the content of the proposed application.
Final applications must be submitted electronically via Grants.gov. Online submission requires registration, a process that usually takes three to five business days but can take as long as four weeks. Be sure to visit Grants.gov and begin registering well in advance of the grant deadline.
There will be a pre-application meeting on May 22, 2013. More information about this meeting can be found, here.
Resources:
Program notice
Program website
Past grantees (no new grants were made in FY 2011 or FY 2012)
