LUCY STEINER is a senior consultant with Public Impact. She researches and consults on a variety of critical education issues, including teacher and leader policy, school restructuring, charter school policy, and teacher professional development. Ms. Steiner both conducts her own work and leads project teams to deliver research, training, and consulting. Her work often provides a bridge between district leadership, school leadership, and instruction. A former high school English teacher, Ms. Steiner holds a master's degree in education and social policy from Northwestern University and a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Example Projects: In the area of teacher and leader policy, Ms. Steiner’s recent work includes co-authoring a set of tools that can be used by any district to select teachers and leaders with the competencies needed to lead effective school turnaround efforts; authoring a paper on Singapore’s highly regarded teacher evaluation policies; and supporting national efforts to use emerging technologies and teacher role redesign to extend the reach of high-performing teachers. As part of her work for the Barksdale Reading Institute, she is currently leading a three-year evaluation of four turnaround schools in Mississippi with a focus on whether principals are using the leader actions associated with successful organizational turnarounds. In addition, she has led several workshops and webinars with school, district, and state policymakers on using competency-based screening and hiring practices to improve leadership in chronically failing schools. 

In the area of school restructuring, her work includes: authoring a paper on performance-based school closures and co-authoring a paper on state takeovers for the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement, and co-authoring a paper on starting fresh with new schools to address school failure.

Ms. Steiner’s charter school policy work includes leading Public Impact’s partnership with the National Charter School Resource Center; co-authoring a paper on considering alternatives to school closure for the Center on Reinventing Public Education; co-authoring the U.S. Department of Education’s “Innovation Guide” on charter school authorizing; and co-authoring an evaluation of the federal Dissemination Grant Program for the Charter Schools Program at the U.S. Department of Education. She also serves as a consultant to the mayor of Indianapolis’ office of charter schools.

Contact Lucy Steiner