Assistant Principal

Scope of Work

The Assistant Principal of Instruction (API) is the primary manager and evaluator of teachers, directly responsible for the quality of instruction and execution of the Breakthrough Unified School Model in the classrooms under their care. As a core member of the School Leadership Team, the API collaborates at a high level to ensure the full student experience—academic and cultural—reflects the Breakthrough model.

Core Responsibilities

• Student Outcomes, Curriculum Fidelity, and Breakthrough Unified Model Execution:

  • Improves student outcomes by developing teacher instructional skill, ensuring fidelity to curriculum and grading expectations, driving high-quality lesson internalization, and holding teachers accountable to measurable student mastery.
  • Makes sure teachers implement Breakthrough-approved curriculum with strict fidelity, follow the established scope and sequence, apply Breakthrough Grading Guidelines consistently and accurately, engage in high-quality lesson internalization prior to instruction, and deliver instruction aligned to grade-level standards and the Breakthrough Teacher Rubric.
  • Makes these improvements through frequent classroom observation, student work analysis, assessment data review, lesson internalization checks, grading audits aligned to network guidelines, and addressing deviations from curriculum, scope and sequence, grading guidelines, or instructional expectations immediately.
  • Collaborates with the Principal, Network Directors, and other leaders to ensure curriculum, culture, grading, intervention, and instructional systems operate cohesively.

• Real-Time Coaching (RTC) as the Primary Lever:

  • Improves teacher practice and student outcomes through RTC aligned to the Breakthrough Teacher Rubric and Arc of the Year (AOTY).
  • Defines the rubric bar clearly, calibrates consistently with the Principal, aligns with other leaders on quality expectations, coaches teachers toward rubric mastery using Breakthrough’s coaching model, and uses observable classroom evidence to measure growth.
  • Includes in-the-moment instructional feedback, immediate corrections to instructional moves, resetting rigor when it slips, reinforcing alignment to lesson objectives, providing specific, actionable next steps, and following up to ensure implementation.
  • Is comfortable interrupting and/or stepping into instruction when necessary, skilled at identifying misalignment to rigor or standards, ready to model high-quality instructional moves across content areas, prepared to practice techniques with teachers until mastery is achieved, and coaches at determined frequency and intensity based on evidence of student outcomes.

• Feedback Culture & Personal Growth:

  • Is both a coach and a learner, receiving functional role support from Breakthrough’s Academic Team and receiving frequent real-time coaching from the Principal, Managing Directors of Schools, and Strategic instructional partners.
  • Models what it looks like to receive feedback, refine practice, and raise the bar for themselves.

Skills & Qualifications

• Teaching Experience: 3+ years teaching experience, preferably in an urban setting with a proven track record of driving student academic growth.

• Instructional Knowledge & Coaching Ability: Strong instructional knowledge and coaching ability.

• Leadership Experience: Experience leading and developing adults preferred.

• Feedback Comfort: Comfort giving direct, actionable feedback.

• Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s preferred. Valid teaching license required, or in the process of obtaining a valid Ohio teaching license which can include a 1 or 5-year substitute license. Valid Ohio Principal Licensure preferred, inclusive of non-traditional Licensure Pathways.

Why Breakthrough

• Mindsets: Leads with clear mindsets such as doing our job, taking full ownership of results, holding high expectations, intervening quickly, prioritizing long-term student success, communicating openly and honestly, remaining committed, and centering joy.

• Equal Opportunity Employer: Breakthrough Public Schools is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin.

Benefits

• Compensation: Competitive and commensurate with experience.

• Benefits: Comprehensive benefit package including medical, dental, and vision, life, and disability coverage. Participation in the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS) or the School Employees Retirement System of Ohio (SERS).