Six years ago, Tom Brenner was one of the youngest professionals in the first cohort of the Minnesota Principals Academy. From his job as middle-school principal in Cloquet, Brenner drove to the metro many times over 18 months, sometimes more than once a week. It was a big commitment, but his leadership team was supportive.
“Every time I got back from the academy, we would talk through something in a new way,” he says. “After a few times, they were ready for me. In the first year, we started at ground zero, wrote out our mission and vision, and laid out a plan for the next two to three years.”

Over time, Brenner’s faculty and staff implemented a variety of interventions in math and reading, from programmatic changes to scheduling. They formed and worked in professional learning communities structured around instruction. And test scores improved.
“The biggest take-back of the Principals Academy was that it helped me understand and implement myself better in the building,” says Brenner. “I went from managing to being an instructional leader.”
Strong leadership, strong schools
“There are no strong schools without strong leadership,” says Ken Dragseth, director of the University’s administrative licensure program and former superintendent of Edina Public Schools. “School principals are second only to classroom teachers in their importance to student success.”
Research shows that principals impact 25 percent of student learning, yet little professional development is targeted to principals. Since the Principals Academy was established in Minnesota six years ago as part of the U’s College Readiness Consortium, it has helped to train more than 300 school leaders. The academy has used an executive development curriculum developed by the National Institute of School Leadership (NISL).
Brenner’s story is just one of many that illustrate the academy’s personal and statewide impact. Jessica Cabeen applied and was accepted into a cohort held in Rochester as a special-education supervisor in the Austin Public Schools.
“Having the time to read relevant literature and discuss with other professionals was priceless,” says Cabeen. “Looking at context and reality with other districts across Minnesota allowed me time to think through how practices back in my district could change or impact students.”
In the Principals Academy, Cabeen discovered her passion to lead a school building. Today all 400 of Austin’s kindergarteners attend one of the all-day/everyday programs at Woodson Kindergarten Center where she is principal.
“The academy gave me more rigor and helped me articulate that,” she says. “My position has also allowed me to become a strong voice for stuedents with diverse needs as well as the importance of all-day kindergarten and strong preschool programs.”
Mary Jo Schmid, part of Brenner’s cohort, retired in June and calls the Principals Academy a highlight of her career.
“It gave me the information, insight, and training to lead a school into the 21st century,” says Schmid, who was a principal in Moorhead. “Not only did I become a learner, but also the staff at our school valued what I was able to share with them. We were able to pull ourselves through old paradigms and refocus our efforts on our students’ learning, not the excuses for why we couldn’t meet their needs.”
Dragseth credits the cohort model as a key to success.
“You get to know each other so well and can call on people all over the state,” he says. “You build perspective on differences and similarities across districts so you can support students all over the state. You come away with a higher-level appreciation of what people can do.
“When you’re in the Principals Academy,” he adds, “we want you to be not only a great principal but a great state leader.”
New features, new cohorts forming
With the College Readiness Consortium’s move into the College of Education and Human Development this year, the Principals Academy has a new home in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD). In preparation for the change, Dragseth led the program through a year-long study, surveying the state’s 1500 principals, past participants, and models beyond the NISL curriculum. They stuck with the model and enhanced the content.
When the next cohort of the Principals Academy meets for the first time in October, it will embark on a program with several new components, including instructional practices for special education and English language learning, teacher and principal evaluations (mandated principal evaluations begin statewide this year), community engagement, and guest lectures from CEHD faculty and staff.
Eight days of training are held during each school year and the remaining 14 days during breaks.
Finally, for school leaders who complete the academy and then enroll in an OLPD doctoral program, 12 elective academic credits will be waived.
One or two more cohorts are expected to begin in 2014, including one in northwestern Minnesota.
Learn more
Learn more about the program and see a short video at Minnesota Principals Academy.
Read Ken Dragseth’s post about key challenges school leaders must address and six ways for principals to create a high-performing school on CEHD’s Vision 2020 blog.
Read a related story about state-by-state differences in effective school leadership and other findings of a national study on school leadership that is now being used by leaders in states including Alaska.
Story by Gayla Marty | Fall 2013

Literacy coach Anne Ittner gives an example of the encouraging growth she is seeing in her students’ reading skills.
“Last year I worked with a third-grade student who came into the intervention group practicing sounding out words,” says Ittner. “She was well below grade level in her reading fluency. After five months of focused instruction and goal setting in decoding and fluency, she gained confidence and excitement about reading. By spring, she was reading at grade level. She couldn’t wait to get home to tell her mom!”
Ittner works at Best Academy and Mastery School, two of six PRESS sites in Minneapolis. PRESS is a comprehensive approach to early literacy, driven by research-based practices. The program incorporates quality core instruction, data-driven instructional decisions and interventions, expanded support for English learners, and meaningful professional development to support systemic change.
Nearly one in four third-graders in Minnesota today is failing to reach basic levels of literacy. That means 15,000 children each year. Research shows that if students don’t read proficiently by third grade, odds are that they will not catch up.
Such distressing numbers motivated the Minnesota Center for Reading Research (MCRR) to form a partnership in 2011 with the Target Corporation, Minnesota Reading Corps, Minneapolis Public Schools, and two charter schools to examine the issue and act. Together they formed the Path to Reading Excellence in School Sites, or PRESS. Their goal: Getting all students reading at their grade level by third grade.
The PRESS sites include nearly 1,800 students in grades K-3. At the end of year two, the results are promising:
• Approximately 70 percent of K-3 students receiving PRESS interventions made at least one year’s growth in one year’s time, considerably higher than students who were not proficient readers and did not receive PRESS intervention.
• In kindergarten, PRESS reduced the number of students performing below grade-level proficiency by 27 percent, creating a strong foundation for these young children to carry forward their success into future grades.
How PRESS works
Before students start to bustle through school hallways, PRESS is already in action. University faculty and literacy coaches have met with principals and introduced teachers to ways of collecting and analyzing data. They’ve provided the PRESS Intervention Manual and taught teachers and staff how to use it.
Interventions cover a range of literacy skills including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. For example: Students may match picture cards to their initial, medial, or final letter sounds on a game board. They may use letter cards to create new words by replacing one letter. Students may read passages together in pairs, check for errors, and answer questions.
In the first months of the school year, students are evaluated using common benchmark assessments. Faculty and coaches then facilitate grade-level data meetings to help teachers analyze student data and strategize and implement plans for interventions. Year round, PRESS staff work collaboratively with schools behind the scenes–aiding in data collection, tracking, and analysis and training teachers on intervention methods–and give day-to-day support to students by providing individualized interventions.
The PRESS development team is led by faculty members Lori Helman in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Matthew Burns and Jennifer McComas in the Department of Educational Psychology. At each site, a literacy coach provides guidance and support to teachers. Together the teachers and coach analyze student data to better make instructional decisions and implement classwide interventions that meet students’ needs.
Literacy assistants–who are current CEHD graduate students–team with Minnesota Reading Corps members to plan and deliver individualized literacy interventions to students who are reading below proficiency level, helping them to meet grade-level literacy goals.
The effect of PRESS is twofold:
• Coaching and professional development help teachers implement classwide reading interventions and data-based decision-making in their classrooms to the benefit of all students.
• Small groups of struggling students receive much-needed individualized support to increase their proficiency levels.
This multi-tiered approach was welcomed at Pillsbury Elementary School in northeast Minneapolis.
“We work very collaboratively to make sure our children receive the instruction they need,” says principal Laura Cavender. “PRESS was a natural fit for our school. The University faculty shared their knowledge and expertise, and the PRESS coach became an important part of our Instructional Leadership Team, helping to disaggregate data, research strategies, provide coaching for teachers, lead instruction and provide leadership for tutors that work with our students.”
Next steps
The need to “catch students up” in reading is a priority across the nation. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 34 percent of fourth-grade students demonstrated at least proficient reading skills in 2011; among economically disadvantaged students it was only 17 percent. A long-term goal of PRESS is to introduce its model to other schools across the nation.
Now in its third year, PRESS continues to provide support in its partner schools as well as share what is being learned. Twin Cities school districts have shown considerable interest in PRESS, which will likely lead to increased implementation in the upcoming school years and will continue to move the mission forward.
“PRESS is an opportunity for a team of partners to come together to work on a critical educational problem,” says Helman. “As university faculty, we are proud to contribute to this important work.”
Learn more about PRESS at the Minnesota Center for Reading Research.
Story by Shona Burke | Fall 2013