Leading Across Boundaries

IEL mourns the tragic events that occurred this summer. We mourn Alton Sterling (Baton Rouge, La.) and Philando Castile (Falcon Heights, Minn.), whose lives were tragically cut short during encounters with police. Deaths like these are too common in our communities. We mourn the murder of Officers Smith, Ahrens, Krol, Zamarripa, and Thompson in Dallas. […]

In July, the IEL-based Appalachian Higher Education Network (AHEN) held its annual conference with the theme “Family. Institution. Community. Self.” These are the four pillars of student success as developed by Dr. Aaron Thompson, interim president of Kentucky State University and keynote speaker at the event. AHEN is supported by the work of three mentors:

Martin J. Blank, president of IEL since 2009, will step down after a planned transition and search. After 25 years with the Institute, Marty will leave his position in early 2017 after a successor has been named. He will continue as the director of IEL’s Coalition for Community Schools until a new Coalition director is

Over 60 years after Brown v. Board, the education system is still struggling with segregation, the opportunity and achievement gaps, school funding discrepancies, and improving outcomes for all young people. In 2007, Dr. Claude Steele, then at Stanford University, delivered the seventh annual Jacqueline P. Danzberger Memorial Lecture on stereotype threat and why understanding it

IEL’s board of directors named Kent McGuire as its new chair last November. A longtime supporter, he joined the board in 2002 and is a 1981 alumnus of IEL’s Education Policy Fellowship Program. A recent Education Week commentary he co-authored calls for states to prioritize community schools in state education reform. The article was based on

As the new Every Student Succeeds Act shifts more responsibilities back to the state and local levels, the roles of school boards continues to be paramount. In 1986, IEL authored the report School Boards: Strengthening Grass Roots Leadership, which identified indicators of effective school boards. A few of these board indicators include investment in board development,

Career readiness has been an important consideration of U.S. public education since the early 20th century. In 1994, two leaders in the workforce development field—Joan Wills, founder and former director of IEL’s Center for Workforce Development, and Irene Lynn, former leader of the National School-to-Work Office—came together to provide insight on what motivated involvement in

During spring cleaning earlier this year, IEL got new chairs for the office’s conference rooms, but didn’t want the old ones to go into the trash. Instead, Maame Appiah, Director of Operations & Network Development for IEL’s Coalition for Community Schools, sent them to Ghana. Maame’s family members run Mother’s Love Kids Foundation Centre, a

In 1991, Martin J. Blank—who became IEL’s president in 2009—led a task force commissioned by the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, a major step forward for interagency collaboration. The group brought together leaders from across the country to think together about communicating the importance of school-community partnerships. The work of this

From June 22-24, over 1,100 educators, parent leaders, community partners and district leaders from 47 states, Australia, the Netherlands, and the Philippines gathered at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago for the 2015 National Family and Community Engagement Conference. Guided by the conference theme, Shaping our Future by Leading Together: Families, Schools, Communities, participants embraced