Brooke Leadership Tracks
Job
description
Skills
required:
Master Teacher
Principal
Operations
Full teaching load, plus:
 mentoring new teachers or
associate teacher.
 Professional development
leadership – leading grade
level or learning team
meetings, conducting new
teacher orientation, and
collaborating with
principals to set PD goals.
 Participate in interview
panels
Work a minimum of 12 hours a
day at school and some time
on weekends. Year round
position.
Work a minimum of 11 hours a
day at school and some
weekends. Year round
position.
Take full responsibility for
academic achievement,
building operations, finances of
school, and school culture.
 Instructional excellence.
 An ability to work well with
other adults.
 Instructional excellence.
 An ability to work well with
other adults.
 An ability to provide
Take full responsibility for all
non-instructional aspects of
school management, including:
 Facilities management
 Student recruiting
 Technology
 Transportation
 Food services
 State and federal
compliance and reporting
 Purchasing
 Supervising all nonacademic personnel,
including the nurse
 Attention to detail, time
management skills, and
fantastic organizational
skills.
Personally supervise all
academic areas of the school
by observing teachers; giving
feedback; monitoring data;
coordinating PD; hiring,
evaluating, and firing teachers;
teaching a minimum of 30
minutes a day.
Other
Dean of Students: Take full
responsibility for establishing
and maintaining consistent
expectations for student
behavior and for building a
positive school culture.
Director of Student Support:
Take full responsibility for
assisting teachers in meeting
the needs of their students and
complying with state
requirements for SpEd and ELL.
Dean of Students: A
demonstrated commitment to
our code of conduct and a
fundamental belief in our
1
Master Teacher
How to get
there:
 Excellent achievement
results for at least three
years
 Proficiency in all teaching
standards and exemplary
ratings in all collaboration
standards
Principal
Operations
instructional feedback to
teachers across a range of
grade levels and subject
areas.
 An ability to balance time
and responsibilities and to
make executive decisions in
accordance with the
mission of the school.
 Thorough understanding
of how operations impact
and support academic
achievement.
 Ability to manage others.
 Problem solving skills and
initiative.
 Excellent achievement
results
 A range of teaching
experience across a range
of subjects and grade levels
 Demonstrate a constructive
approach to problem
solving and initiative and a
significant pattern of doing
whatever the school needs.
 Maintain a positive attitude
and a demonstrated belief
in the school’s fundamental
commitment to our
children.
 Teaching experience
preferred but not required
so long as the candidate
can demonstrate an
understanding how every
operational detail supports
instruction
 A record of demonstrating
the above listed skills in a
variety of contexts
Other
philosophy of behavior and
school culture. An ability to
maintain consistency in the
face of challenges.
Director of Student Support:
An unwavering belief in the
ability of all our students to
meet academic expectations.
Philosophical alignment with
our beliefs about how to best
support student achievement.
Dean of Students: Teaching
experience and a history of
demonstrating the above skills.
Internal candidates must
average exemplary on
“Classroom Culture” standards.
Director of Student Support:
Certified in Special Education
and teaching experience. A
demonstrated ability to
improve the performance of
struggling students. A
demonstrated record of
alignment with our philosophy
about student ownership and
expectations. Internal
2
Master Teacher
Principal
Operations
Other
candidates must average
exemplary on “Ensuring
Success for all Students”
standards.
Investing in Constant Development
Getting the right people on board is only the first step in the process. Talented individuals who aspire to develop into outstanding
teachers need frequent and immediate feedback. They need opportunities to collaborate and learn from other smart and driven
colleagues with more experience. Our best opportunity to turn talented individuals into great teachers is to create systems and build
professional cultures that are focused on collaboration, reflection, and improvement.
Because strong, school-based professional development for teachers is at the heart of what we do, it is described in more detail in the
Brooke’s Academic Essentials section, starting on page 16. The same principles that guide our approach to teacher professional
development also guide our work to develop school leaders and operations staff.
Retaining Top Performers
Our best strategy to ensure that our students are instructed by the best teachers available is to retain the best teachers at Brooke. Since
staff retention is not our bottom line, and since the demands of the job are significant, we expect to have some teacher attrition from
year to year; however, by hiring intelligently and developing a strong and supportive professional culture that values great teaching
above all else, we have been able to keep our overall rate of teacher retention high (around 85%, which is particularly high by local
sector standards), and to hold on to our top-performing teachers in the process.
By focusing on constant professional development, we are able to retain our top performing teachers, who in other school settings
would plateau. On year-end staff surveys, between 95% and 100% of our teachers have indicated that they agree or strongly agree
that teaching at Brooke “has made me a better teacher,” and we find that our highest performing teachers are just as positive about
their constant improvement as our newer teachers are. We hope that our top teachers will never hit a ceiling here, and we have created
clear pathways to emphasize that commitment to developing and retaining our top talent. At this point, we have developed three
3
tracks that we hope encourage top-performers to remain at Brooke: the master teacher track, the instructional leader track, and the
operational leader track. The master teacher track is specifically designed to recognize top performers and celebrate them as teacher
leaders. Master teachers receive a 10% raise annually and also bear additional responsibilities for mentoring and planning and
executing professional development. Teachers qualify as masters only if they attain three years of exceptionally high achievement
results; qualification thresholds are provided to teachers so that criteria are clear and public. Master teacher status is not tenure;
teachers maintain the status only as long as they maintain the necessary level of results.
Creating a Pipeline: The Associate Teacher Program
In order to expand the pool of potential candidates and to develop promising young talent, all Brooke schools employ a new teacher
development program. Under this program, teachers with little or no formal teaching experience are hired to serve as grade level
associate teachers, assisting the grade level team as needed, but most importantly, participating as a full member of that team in all coplanning and professional development activities. In order to further develop their skills and to collect targeted feedback, associate
teachers are assigned an experienced mentor teacher to meet regularly with him/her, observe him/her and provide targeted feedback
and evaluation according to the school’s Standards of Excellent Teaching. During the course of the year, associate teachers who
demonstrate adequate progress are given the opportunity to teach a regular daily segment of the curriculum in a particular classroom
(i.e. vocabulary), and are also given the opportunity later in the year to lead a classroom from start to finish for a week at a time in
grade level classes. During the course of the year, associate teachers also assume increased responsibility for lesson planning – from
planning on lesson with a given objective, to planning to string of lessons, to planning all the lessons in a unit. In addition, associate
teacher responsibilities include working with small groups of students, substitute teaching as needed, and supervising arrival,
dismissal, lunch, and recess as needed.
While new classroom teachers at Brooke are required to have two years of prior teaching experience, associate teachers who
successfully complete the program are given the opportunity to lead their own classroom after just one year in the associate program.
Associate teacher candidates have a strong record of success at Brooke, where 70% of associate teachers have been offered full
teacher responsibilities following the completion of their associate years.
The associate teacher program creates a strong pipeline of new hires, thereby significantly relieving the burden of finding skilled and
experienced teachers to serve as classroom teachers. As demonstrated in the table below, when the network reaches the five-school
stage, we project that 20-25 of our annual teacher vacancies will be filled by graduates from our associate teacher program.
4
Leadership Talent
In order to ensure that we are creating a pipeline of school leaders, Brooke has a principal fellowship program. Principal Fellows
spend a year being closely mentored by our Co-Director for Academics, who prepares an individualized development plan to prepare
Fellows for a school leader role. In addition to teaching responsibilities, Principal Fellows:
 Lead professional development sessions and data meetings
 Directly manage the performance of one grade level team
 Join principals for weekly observations and follow-up feedback
 Participate in weekly leadership team meetings.
Candidates who successfully complete the Fellowship begin the following year as a Principal or Assistant Principal at a Brooke
school. We will train 1-2 Principal Fellows each year. Our first two principal fellows completed the fellowship in June 2011 and
began serving as principals of Brooke 1 and Brooke 2 in August 2011.
While it is not required that Principal Fellows come from the ranks of existing Brooke teachers, so far our best candidates for the
fellowship have been “in-house.” In order to begin to develop this pipeline at an even earlier stage, we are designing a pre-fellowship
program that can help identify and develop potential leaders before they are able or ready to take on the principal fellowship.
Operations Talent
Each Principal is supported by an on-site Director of Operations who will manages facilities, finances, transportation, food service,
afterschool and Saturday programming, front office staff, and all other non-instructional aspects of the school. Each founding
Director of Operations participates in a year-long Operations Leader Fellowship, under the supervision of Brooke’s Chief Operating
Officer, including the following components:
 Day to day responsibilities of a “program manager” (staffing front office, coordinating food service, transportation, and state
reporting)
 Coordinating one dedicated building project, from design and bid collection through project completion
5


Coordinating network-wide enrollment process
Participating in all network-wide operations team professional development
6
Teacher Compensation
Historically, teacher salaries at Brooke have averaged less than those at Boston Public Schools (BPS) for commensurate years of
experience. Teachers have come to Brooke and stayed for reasons beyond the competitiveness of compensation. While average base
salaries have been lower than those at BPS, annual raises have exceeded those at BPS, ranging from 5% to 10% for the last 3 years.
We are currently developing a program for performance-based raises, based on the average student achievement records of teachers
over the previous 3 years (based on growth data).
The school’s commitment to excellent teaching is reflected in the school’s performance-based bonus program. With the help of a
federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant, Brooke has offered performance-based bonuses to instructional staff of up to $10,000 each year.
As a condition of the grant, the school has had to demonstrate that we can sustain the program without grant assistance, under
increasingly powerful economies of scale, as the school’s enrollment has steadily grown. We do not believe, nor have we seen any
evidence in research, that the day-to-day behavior of teachers is influenced by performance pay incentives; however, we do believe
that our performance based bonus system communicates the value that we place on excellence in teaching. Furthermore, our master
teacher raises of 10% annually also reinforce our respect for excellent teaching (see “Retaining Top Performers” section above for
more information on master teachers).
In the long term, we know that in order to attracting and retaining great teachers, we need to direct as many resources possible to
teacher compensation. This drive is why we devote all fundraising to reducing facility costs by paying down our facility debt; once
fully grown, we will not need external funding for operations but we can increase teacher compensation by continued fundraising for
building expenses.
7