Preparing Leaders

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and IEL have been co-hosting education policy forums since 1983 as a vehicle to highlight research, policy, and practice in education. These monthly luncheons feature many of the leading researchers, thinkers, and practitioners in education. The 35th anniversary season kick off on October 19th featured Margaret Maaka University of […]

IEL is proud to introduce the 54th cohort of our Education Policy Fellowship Program. Three hundred ten Fellows from 16 sites are participating in the ten-month professional development initiative in which diverse emerging and mid-level leaders learn together about education policy, leadership, and networking. These participants join an alumni network of 9,000 leaders working in

The annual Washington Policy Seminar, a capstone event of IEL’s 53-year-old Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP), focused this year on Navigating Education Policy Change. EPFP Fellows, a diverse cohort of professionals in education and related fields, spent four days learning about federal policy, sharing knowledge across roles and institutions and visiting Capitol Hill. EPFP Fellows

Recently, IEL interviewed Dr. Larry Leverett, the newly retired executive director of the Panasonic Foundation, a corporate foundation with a mission to help public school systems with high percentages of children in poverty to improve learning for all students. Dr. Leverett reflected on his Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) experience. He maintains his multi-sector network

The Bay Area Regional Leadership Learning Exchange, “Ecology of Action,” was a professional development opportunity for teachers and principals. Sixty-five participants met at Oakland’s Jack London Aquatic Center. The participants included school personnel, students, parents, teachers, principals, and assistant superintendents. Participants were invited to engage in dynamic mindfulness with Niroga Institute’s BK Bose and each

Educators, parents, families, and community partners must be able to respond to trauma and know where to access support. Over 400 participants tuned in to a second IEL webinar on addressing childhood trauma, co-hosted by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. This webinar examined how schools and community partners can engage and work

Seeking insight into some of the most challenging questions on race and equity still left unanswered in America, a bus full of community college faculty and education leaders, including Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) participants, embarked on a civil rights bus tour in late November. Their journey took them to historic civil rights movement sites

Transformative, visionary, inspiring, life-changing, empowering: Words that IEL’s Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) alumni use to describe their EPFP experience, whether they were in the program last year or fifty years ago. EPFP focuses on three pillars: policy, leadership, and networking. This approach invites leaders learn from each other across systems. EPFP has graduated over

Shital C. Shah is the assistant director of educational issues at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In this role, she works across AFT departments to help examine and develop policy for and to support implementation of AFT’s community schools area of work around whole school reform and provides support and training to state and

The debates over the appropriate federal role in education have been persistent for decades, oscillating between the federal government and the states with regards to scope, strengthening, and responsibility. The new federal Every Student Succeeds Act represents the latest recalibration and the tenuous nature of the federal-state relationship. Dr. Michael Usdan, IEL senior fellow and