The Harold K. L. Castle Foundation is committed to the creation of a public school system characterized by the high achievement of all students. The Foundation invests in efforts to eliminate the achievement and preparation gaps in public education so that all of Hawaii's children have access to high quality pre K - 12 education that prepares them for success in college, career and citizenship. We believe that strong principals, teachers and community leadership are critical to reaching this outcome.

Wherever we find high performing schools, we seem to find strong leaders. With mounting school-level challenges, and the imminent retirement of dozens of baby-boom generation principals and teacher leaders, the need for new public school leadership continues to mount. In his 2005 study Educating School Leaders, Art Levine, President of Teachers College at Columbia University, concludes that the quality of educational leadership and administration programs around the country range from “inadequate to appalling”. The 2005 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research report on Public High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991-2002 found that only 32 percent of high school graduates were qualified to attend a four-year college. Add to this disheartening national picture Hawaii’s perennial ranking at or near the bottom of the nation in student performance in math and reading. These findings suggest that the challenge of reinventing school leadership in Hawaii and across the country is formidable and urgent.

We support efforts that:

• Build school principals' ability to become transformational leaders;
• Build the partnerships and pipelines that strengthen the leadership of principals, teachers, CAS, parents, and communities; and,
• Identify, develop and provide tools for transformational leadership, including accessible data, information, and resources.

In addition to identifying good grantmaking opportunities, the challenge for the Foundation is to determine whether our investments are having the desired impact. In an effort to hold ourselves to the highest degree of accountability and to monitor the effectiveness of our investments, we have joined forces with Targeted Leadership Consulting to develop this Education Dashboard. This Dashboard consists of indicators and metrics of school-level leadership, student achievement and attainment that the Foundation believes should improve if we are wise with our investments of dollars, time and technical assistance.