Meredith I. Honig

Meredith Honig is a Professor of Education Policy, Organizations, & Leadership at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, where she is also Director of the District Leadership Design Lab (DL2, dl2.education.uw.edu) and Adjunct Professor of Public Affairs at the Evans School. Her research, teaching, and district partnerships focus on the interruption and rebuilding of inequitable school district practices and systems to ensure high-quality teaching and learning for each student, especially those historically underserved by public school systems. This work recognizes that barriers to educational equity are systemic, that school district central office leaders are in strategic positions to lead for systemic changes important to such results, and that they would benefit from new knowledge and support for their leadership. Meredith has examined and supported district leadership of various reform strategies including: school-community partnerships, new small autonomous schools initiatives, data-informed decision-making, and districtwide teaching and learning improvement efforts. Her findings have been published in such journals as Educational Researcher, the American Educational Research Journal, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and funded by The Spencer Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and other sources. In 2014, Meredith and Lydia Rainey established the District Leadership Design Lab (DL2) to help district leaders access knowledge and tools to help them lead their own efforts to fundamentally transform their central offices into school support systems. Between 2012-18, she directed the Leadership for Learning (Ed.D.) program which, in 2016, won the Exemplary Educational Leadership Program award from the University Council for Educational Administration. Meredith advisees Ed.D., Ph.D., and M.Ed. students focused on policy implementation, organizational behavior, and systemic leadership for educational equity.