NCUST’s A-PLUS San Diego Receives Grant from SDSU President’s Leadership Fund

Recently the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST) received a $5,000 grant from the SDSU President’s Leadership Fund to aid in our work with an urban high school in San Diego Unified School District.  An overview of the project is listed below.

A-PLUS San Diego (Advancing Principal Leadership in Urban Schools). Often, urban principals lack support as they identify and consider opportunities for improving instruction, curricula, learning climate, and other variables that influence student learning results.  The A-PLUS program provides a structure for focusing on specific issues and allows participating principals to learn from and with each other and the executive coach as they work in a systematic way to demonstrate measurable progress on key indicators of improvement. The A-PLUS model is a dynamic approach to leading successful urban school improvement based on NCUST’s extensive research with high-performing urban schools.

The A-PLUS San Diego project will be the first implementation of A-PLUS with principals of more than one small high school. The participants are two principals with responsibility for two small schools each on one high school campus, and their supervisor. The long-range target audience will be districts that are implementing a variety of high school reform models and need assistance achieving consistently high results across all student groups.

Project Goals:

1)    Demonstrate the implementation of the A-PLUS model with principals of multiple small high schools (two small schools per principal).

2)    Help the four small schools generate substantial increases in academic achievement.

3)    Prove the model’s effectiveness for principals of multiple small high schools.

4)    Engage SDSU’s Educational Leadership graduate students in research on how to support high school principals in substantial improvement of student achievement.

For more information about NCUST, our sponsorship opportunities or our work in transforming urban schools please email ncust@mail.sdsu.edu