The Journal Gazette

Ft. Wayne, IN  - The New York-based Wallace Foundation targets educational leadership as one of its three philanthropic missions. In January 2002, it launched an initiative to help states and school districts collaborate in developing superintendents and principals as leaders. Indiana was chosen for one of the 15 state grants. In turn, Thomas Fowler-Finn, then superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, landed one of just 10 district grants nationwide, pitching a four-step leadership development academy FWCS had developed to train its own principals. Along with Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, the Eugene, Ore., school district, Atlanta Public Schools and six other “high-need” districts, FWCS became part of a nationwide effort to examine the effects of leadership on student achievement through a program called “Leadership for Educational Achievement in Districts.”

The $5 million grant from Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds couldn’t have come at a better time. The far-reaching demands of the federal No Child Left Behind law were about to kick in just as the district was looking at a wave of administrator retirements and a growing need for qualified administrators.

Now, three years into the five-year grant program, FWCS is still refining its efforts to identify and prepare candidates for school principal posts. Superintendent Wendy Robinson also has seized on the LEAD grant as the key to leveraging major changes in the state’s second-largest school district. The grant money is fueling training efforts aimed at improving schools and eliminating the achievement gap between white and minority students. When the money runs out, she hopes to have transformed the district with effective new systems and with administrators trained in and supportive of efforts designed to bolster student achievement.

“Other LEAD districts have used the money to hire people. We never intended to take the Wallace grant and supplement the staff,” Robinson said. “What we wanted to do was use it to produce structures and systems that will be in place after the grant ends.”

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