Distinguished New Leaders

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo

New Leader, Cohort 2
Uncommon Schools Managing Director
North Star Academies Network
Newark, New Jersey

"What I'm most proud of is being part of a school in which 100% of our students were accepted to four-year colleges."

North Star Academies

Highest college acceptance and placement rates among all schools in New Jersey, regardless of income, from 2006-2007
One of four schools nationwide to receive the 2007-2008 Education Trust "Dispelling the Myth" Award
U.S. Department of Education Title 1 Distinguished School Award, presented to only two New Jersey schools sustaining high learning gains from 2006-2007

With only 2% of Newark high school students graduating from a four-year college, Newark might have been the last city where some residents would want to train, but Paul was encouraged by the invaluable coaching and mentoring he received from North Star Academies' school leadership. In spite of the grim statistics for most Newark public schools, North Star was defying the odds. "I got a chance to work at a school that was doing great things and learn from incredible mentors every day," Paul said. "That was the beauty of the learning experience at New Leaders."

From the start, Paul was impressed and encouraged by the high caliber leaders he trained under during his residency experience. Paul explained, "What made me choose the program was the practical, applied experience that I would have; the fact that this was not a theoretical laboratory and these were real students." To improve student performance, Paul launched a system of data instruction and designed over 100 interim assessments from the 5th through the 12th grade. "After launching that whole data driven process, analyzing the results, and making action plans, our results started to skyrocket," Paul said.

In 2007, the school was one of only two public schools in the state of New Jersey to be honored with a Title 1 Distinguished School Award and was one of four schools in the country to be selected for the "Dispelling the Myth" Award, created by The Education Trust to honor high-performing schools that serve large populations of low-income students or students of color. Also, North Star was one of seven charter high schools chosen by the U.S. Department of Education as a model of achievement and has the highest percentage of four-year college enrollment of any public school in New Jersey.

Each year, hundreds of visitors from across the country and around the world flock to North Star, which is part of the high-performing Uncommon Schools charter management organization. Schools and groups from India, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, Japan, and Thailand have come to North Star to discover the secret of their success. ‘We're thankful that people have tried to come learn with us and share this beautiful adventure of urban education," said Paul. "Because of everything we learned from others when we built this school, we can't envision building a school any other way than opening our doors for others to learn from us as well."

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