Director of Principal Development/Coach
BA, Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley
MA, Education (and Teaching Credentials), Stanford
Ed.D., Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
email beth bernstein-yamashiro
Dr. Beth Bernstein-Yamashiro is the Director of Principal Development/Coach at ECS. She was most recently the Founding Principal at ECMS-Inglewood. Beth has spent the past 25 years in various realms of public education. She started her career as a social studies teacher in Hayward, California. In 1993, she went to graduate school to pursue a doctorate, and wrote her dissertation about the power of positive, close, personal relationships between teachers and students in high school.
After a year of traveling around the world, she moved to Los Angeles and became an assistant principal at Hughes Middle School in Long Beach. She then directed a US Department of Education GEAR UP grant in six middle and three LBUSD high schools aimed at creating a path to college for low-income, underrepresented students.
In 2006, Beth became principal of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy High School, a social justice-themed high school. At LA Leadership, she raised the API, achieved WASC accreditation for the school, saw the opening of a new high school campus, and graduated the school’s first set of seniors. After stepping down to spend time with her own children, she continued to support the school as a board member, and implemented an outdoor program at the high school.
Beth directed the Roots and Wings program, which takes students from urban Los Angeles high schools to local and national parks to learn camping skills, ecology, and stewardship principles. In addition, she recently published, Teacher-Student Relationships: Toward Personalized Education, a monograph in the New Directions for Youth Development series for Jossey Bass (Spring, 2013) with Gil Noam.
Beth received her Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1998, concentrating in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy. She received her teaching credential and MA from Stanford in 1990, and her BA in Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley in 1988.
