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Beth Lief has been a leader in public education reform and innovation for 20 years. In addition to her work as a Senior Fellow in Education for the New Democracy Project, she is currently a Nation Fellow at the Institute for Learning, based at the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh. The Institute for Learning is an internationally recognized center for linking research and practice in urban public school reform. Her work is focused on leadership development in Region 1 and Region 2 of the New York City Department of Education, regions that include virtually all of the schools in the Bronx, New York. She will be responsible for developing and conducting instructional leadership sessions with local instructional specialists, principals, and assistant principals as well as co-planning and coordinating professional development with the Regions' leadership teams.
Immediately prior to joining the Institute for Learning, Lief served as a consultant to the New York City Department of Education's strategic planning process, coordinating the instructional aspects of the planning process and managing the literacy working group. From March, 2000 until June, 2003, she was Senior Vice President for Strategic Relations for Teachscape, a venture that uses Internet supported resources, including videos of exemplary teaching practice, specialist commentary and other materials, to provide professional development services to teachers and administrators.
Lief was founding president for over 11 years of New Visions for Public Schools, the largest educational reform organization in New York City devoted to improving the City's public schools. During her tenure, New Visions developed and provided professional development in more than 700 schools and had many of its initiatives replicated on a national basis. Among other initiatives, New Visions was the first recipient of an Annenberg challenge grant that helped create 35 small schools; formed collaborative study groups for superintendents; introduced classroom-based literacy assessment in the early grades to the City's public schools; and received a National Science Foundation grant to work in middle school mathematics in some of the City's most struggling districts. Lief began her work in public education as a civil rights lawyer with the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., serving as one of the lead attorneys in the Kansas City, Missouri school desegregation lawsuit, and later served from 1984 to 1986 as Executive Director of the Mayor's Commission on Special Education in New York City.
Lief serves on the Board of Directors of Public Education Network, Bank Street College of Education and New Visions for Public Schools. She has been a member of numerous other governmental and non-profit boards and committees, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Exceptional Needs Standards Committee. Lief has published articles and chapters on public education reform, small schools and characteristics of successful schools, and has received several awards for her work.
Lief received her B.A. from Barnard College, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and her J.D. from New York University, cum laude, where she was a Root Tilden scholar.
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