Empowerment shares the fundamental belief that decisions about how to educate students should be made as close as possible to those who work with them – principals in collaboration with their school communities.  Such key decisions include broad authority over educational programming and curriculum, discretion over budgets, a significant role in selecting and evaluating the dedicated administrative team that supports each school, and the chance to decide what customized professional development is best for an individual principal and his or her staff.

The support provided to each of the over 500 Empowerment Schools is localized, relevant, and practical.  The 22 Empowerment teams work hard to understand what works and does not work for their schools in order to develop the right supports and to advocate for the policy changes that make sense. As a network of schools, principals select a core team to provide support, guidance, advocacy, and coaching as determined by the needs and goals of their schools. By affiliating with a network of schools, selecting their Network Leader and the Network Team, and by providing regular feedback about the Network Team, principals are assured that those who support them are held accountable and have the skills and knowledge to ensure excellent performance.

Evidence that Empowerment network teams are meeting the needs of their principals is reflected in the most recent Principal Satisfaction Survey results.  95% of principals were very satisfied or satisfied with the support provided by Empowerment.  Nearly 50% of our network leaders were rated at 100% satisfaction by their principals with 94% of Empowerment network leaders receiving 90% to 100% principal satisfaction.  Additional data on Empowerment can be found on our 2007-08 data summary and 2008-09 profile.