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“Strong schools have a powerful impact on students and excellent school leadership matters more now than ever before. Our Principal Ambassador Fellows help us speak directly with principals across the nation about their challenges and successes. I look forward to working with the Fellows to learn from leading schools - and their leadership teams - that provide opportunity to all students.”
– Acting Secretary John King (former Middle School Principal)

The application window for the 2016-2017 Principal Ambassador Fellowship is now closed. Sign up to be notified when the application opens for the 2017-2018 year.

The U.S. Department of Education created the Principal Ambassador Fellowship (PAF) program as one means of recognizing the critical impact that principals have on instruction and student achievement; school climate and improvement; and community and family engagement. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education was thrilled to launch the first Principal Ambassador Fellowship (PAF) program, modeled on the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship (TAF) program, in order to better allow local leaders to both contribute their knowledge and experience to the national dialogue about public education and in turn learn more about education policy at the Federal level.

The PAF program is meant to recognize the important impact that a principal has on instructional leadership, the school environment, and talent management. In order to implement needed reforms, all stakeholders, and most importantly teachers and principals, must understand the intent of policy and be engaged in the outcomes. The PAF position provides outstanding principals who have a record of leadership, student achievement, strong communication skills, and insights from their school experiences an opportunity to highlight the voice of the principal within the education community and the country at large.

Similar to the Department’s TAF program, the mission and goals of the PAF program are too:

• Recognize the importance and impact of principals in schools on instructional leadership, talent management, and community culture
• Improve education programs and policies by strengthening the connection to practical knowledge about school realities to find a better way to recruit, prepare, develop, and retain effective school leaders
• Highlight the voice of principals with the education community and country at large

Throughout this experience, the fellows work in cohorts to achieve three goals:

• LEARN about federal education policy and ED
• REACH out to principals and other school leaders in the field
• REFLECT with ED staff on the knowledge gained

For more information on the background of the PAF Program, please review our Program Overview.