Take learning forward.
At Leading Educators, we help visionary leaders and educators strengthen today's learning and design the innovations they will need tomorrow—grounded in one of the strongest records of impact in the field.
Future-ready educator support, designed for your students.
You want every student to be ready for tomorrow, and the stakes have never felt higher. Their success in a rapidly changing world will depend on what and how well their educators teach them now.
Strengthening learning at scale is more complex than choosing a new curriculum or piloting a program. You’re juggling limited time, competing priorities, and pressure for results. What you need is clarity, aligned leadership, structures, and habits that will last no matter what’s around the corner.
That’s where Leading Educators comes in. We help school systems build the instructional capacity to make student success possible and predictable—on purpose and at scale. Simultaneously, our Innovation studio works shoulder-to-shoulder with real educators to design where learning can go next.
We’ve spent 15 years helping school systems nationwide align leadership, professional learning, and classroom practice—creating the conditions for sustained instructional improvement and pioneering the future of learning.
Most importantly, we don’t just make recommendations—we make them happen.
We cultivate dynamic ecosystems, aligned teams, and durable results.
Dr. Dawn Brooks DeCosta
Dr. Simone Wright
Shelly Gray
Jacqueline Haynes
Kevin Polston
Best-in-class learning, future-ready design.
We strengthen instructional decisionmaking, systems, and impact by expanding what leaders see, how they interpret it, and how they act—together, over time. And where conditions are changing, we partner with school systems to build future models of learning that work toward thriving in new ways.
575,269 students
supported with knowledge-rich, future-ready learning last school year.
21 programs
with ESSA Tier 3 or higher evidence of student impact from 2015 to 2024—including one Tier 1 study accepted by the What Works Clearinghouse. When resources are tight, you need a partner you can trust.
100% of system-level leaders
say Leading Educators has increased their capacity to lead and focus on the conditions for adult learning. That means doing less better.
1,000+ schools
across 150 systems and 26 states influenced to create change last year. Teachers are gaining access to vetted curricula, building understanding, and collaborating more frequently around grade-appropriate and relevant lessons.
575,269 students
supported with knowledge-rich, future-ready learning last school year.
21 programs
with ESSA Tier 3 or higher evidence of student impact from 2015 to 2024—including one Tier 1 study accepted by the What Works Clearinghouse. When resources are tight, you need a partner you can trust.
100% of system-level leaders
say Leading Educators has increased their capacity to lead and focus on the conditions for adult learning. That means doing less better.
1,000+ schools
across 150 systems and 26 states influenced to create change last year. Teachers are gaining access to vetted curricula, building understanding, and collaborating more frequently around grade-appropriate and relevant lessons.
Coherence meets future-ready learning.
As leaders grapple with big questions about how learning must adapt to prepare students for an uncertain future, we’re drawing from our distinct record of system impact to build toward what is needed next. That’s where our Value Add of Technology frameworks come in, offering leaders and educators lenses for making instruction-centered decisions about technology.
Coherence Makes the Difference.
Using innovative design and discovery practices, Leading Educators offers tailored, coherent support where it matters most. Our national network, innovation practices, and best-in-class research enable us to identify what works and make it spread by design.
K-12 Mathematics
We help school systems create joyful, rigorous, and coherent math instruction where every student learns to think deeply, reason confidently, and solve problems that matter with predictability.
Science of Reading & Literacy
We help states, districts, and schools to bridge the gap between knowing and doing—helping leaders and teachers build the skills, structures, and confidence to make excellent reading instruction predictable for every student.
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System Instructional Strategy
Do you want to explore what is contributing to your current state? Could your instructional vision use a refresh? Our system advising services help leaders build capacity to take their work to the next level.
AI Integration, Educator Support, & Future Models
The world is changing rapidly, and education must keep pace. Our Futures Studio is incubating scalable, coherent solutions for the future of teaching and learning–designing in action alongside educators.
Scaling what works to get results.
40+ district and school system professional learning programs. Robust data.Rigorous methods.
After one of the most ambitious studies of professional learning ever conducted, we found ESSA Tier 3 or higher evidence that 21 Leading Educators-supported programs accelerated student learning. Read what we learned about what works and how it can scale.
Pushing beyond the basics toward greater access and opportunity.
Despite more than a decade of important work nationally to make good on college and career readiness standards, too many students are still not getting what they need from core instruction with predictability.
That’s why we are challenging the dominant paradigms of school improvement–offering a sustainable path for coherence that keeps all students in the learning and making progress, no matter where they start.
You deserve the best. We set the standard.
We are proud to have been a certified provider of curriculum-based professional learning since the inaugural Rivet Education Professional Learning Partner Guide.
This designation means we have passed a rigorous third-party evaluation process and provided significant evidence of robust, HQIM-aligned professional learning services. Beyond our partnerships, we’re committed to strengthening the field as cofounders of the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL) and the Coalition to Reimagine the Teaching Role.
"You can’t do the work alone, and we’ve been really fortunate to work with Leading Educators....Having the chance to customize support the way that we need it to be customized so that our teachers and our leaders are receptive is rare. We don’t find many partners that will make that total bend to what we need. That’s why this relationship with Leading Educators has been so fruitful.”
Leenet Campbell-Williams, Chief Academic Officer at Detroit Public Schools CD
Guess less, achieve more.
Demystifying AI-Enabled Pedagogy
As you lean on technology in new ways, the Value Add of Technology on Teaching framework can help you determine how technology can strengthen instruction, deepen thinking, and ignite new possibilities for students in the age of AI.
Originally developed with Google for Education, WestEd, and educators from around the globe, it reflects a coherent perspective on where AI can offer tangible value within the core work of teaching and learning.
Designed for you, built to last.
Effective and sustainable change attends to context. But the past decade of work has also helped us identify common recipes for success. Learn what current Leading Educators partners are trying and accomplishing on the path to their best results yet.
“When I compare the schools with and without Leading Educators support, there is a very noticeable difference in outcomes. The LE team is flexible in adjusting as needed to meet the needs of the schools—sharing ideas that are coherent, appropriate, and always challenging instruction to improve.”
Andres Flores, Local District Secondary Math Coordinator at Los Angeles USD
Accelerating learning today, designing what comes next.
Building a better world requires all of us to do our part.
Whether you’re looking to transform outcomes in your district, seek your next career opportunity, or want to donate, there are many ways to support our mission. When teachers have the support to challenge every student to high levels and ignite a love of learning, students rise.
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