New York City is entering a new phase in its approach to public education. Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, early signals point to a shift toward giving educators a stronger voice in schools and more opportunities to grow throughout their careers.
Two priorities stand out. The first is inclusion. Mamdani has emphasized shifting decision-making closer to the people who make schools run every day, including parents, teachers and principals. The second is investment. His administration has committed to recruiting and retaining great educators, with the goal of making schools places where they will want to stay and grow.
These are important priorities. Schools are stronger when educators feel trusted, have opportunities to build their skills and are connected to the communities they serve.
The next step is to prepare teachers for leadership once they move beyond the classroom.
Across New York City, many strong teachers are promoted into leadership roles without enough preparation for the day-to-day work of leading adults. Running a school requires building effective teams, coaching teachers, managing competing priorities and making decisions that shape school culture. Yet, opportunities to practice those skills and receive feedback from experienced leaders remain limited. Over time, that imbalance leads to frustration, turnover and instability inside schools, undercutting both inclusion and retention.
But New York City already has a public school model designed to approach challenges like this differently. Charter schools were created with the flexibility to shape their own approaches to internal operations, including how they prepare and develop their leaders.
Ascend Charter Schools in Brooklyn, where I serve as CEO, approaches leadership the same way as we approach classroom curricula: as something that should be explicitly taught, practiced and continuously refined, not as something that should be developed through experience alone.
That work begins long before a teacher becomes a principal. All new educators receive a common foundation in instructional practice including, this year, more than 200 hours of direct instruction from curricular experts. This gives future leaders a shared definition of strong teaching, rather than leaving them to their own personal preferences.
As teachers move into leadership, they enter a principal-in-residence program, gradually assuming the responsibilities of running a school while receiving weekly coaching from accomplished former principals. These mentors observe their work and help them navigate the decisions school leaders face every day. Aspiring leaders practice setting expectations for adults, building effective teams and delivering feedback, using real scenarios from their own schools. Throughout, the emphasis is on judgment — participants learn why particular approaches work rather than simply following a prescribed set of steps.
Leadership development also extends into hiring and advancement. Ascend looks for educators who demonstrate a commitment to improving their practice, respond to feedback and achieve strong results. Advancement decisions consider readiness to take on leadership responsibilities, rather than relying only on years of experience.
These design choices are what make a leadership pipeline durable rather than incidental, and they’re the piece most public districts skip. Eighty-one percent of Ascend’s school leaders have been promoted from within, reflecting the opportunities educators have to grow professionally and advance.
Ascend has also seen improvements in how staff assess the effectiveness of its leadership. Attuned Education Partners’ Spark Survey, an external assessment of how employees rate school and network leadership in areas including clarity of goals, conditions for student learning, instruction improvement, communication, school culture and responsiveness to feedback, found Ascend’s score increased from the 28th percentile in spring 2025 to the 77th percentile a year later.
Over a similar period, student math proficiency rose from 59.3% in the 2023-24 school year to 80.3% in 2025-26, according to New York State Education Department data.
While the data do not establish a direct causal relationship with leadership training, they reinforce why it matters. Principals who know how to develop educators create the conditions for better teaching, which moves student outcomes. Every policy eventually reaches students through a principal. Curriculum, teacher retention, school culture, family engagement and instructional quality all depend on the capability of the person running the building.
None of what Ascend has done is inaccessible to a large public school district. New York City already has a path from assistant principal to principal — but it is primarily a credentialing step rather than a sustained, practice-based process that ensures leaders develop the skills required to run a school. Districts already invest heavily in teacher development; they could apply a similar approach to preparing principals.
Imagine a two-year residency built around structured practice, coaching from accomplished school leaders and a common curriculum focused on talent, instruction, operations and school culture — with promotion tied to demonstrated readiness to lead adults, not just years of service.
Building a citywide leadership pipeline, one that prepares principals with the same level of care and rigor the city already devotes to teacher development, is a concrete way for Mamdani to achieve both goals of empowering the people closest to schools and investing in educators so they can grow and stay.