Shirley Carraway

Shirley Carraway is the North Carolina State Liaison for the SECC. Dr. Carraway provides TA and resource support to the North Carolina Department of Education to increase its capacity to support schools and districts to address Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requirements and other student achievement goals. Previously, she served as the North Carolina liaison for the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center at Edvantia and as an executive coach for school leadership in five Kentucky school districts. Prior to retirement, Dr. Carraway was the superintendent of Orange County Schools in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Other positions include associate superintendent of educational programs and services, elementary and high school principal, and speech language clinician. She has served as a facilitator for the Southern Association for Colleges and Schools and a trainer and staff developer. Her higher education work includes facilitating the development of a Virtual Early College High School pilot program at East Carolina University, leading the Chancellor’s Leadership Academy for faculty and staff, and serving as the principal investigator for a Teacher Quality Partnership Grant in the College of Education. Dr. Carraway earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership with a concentration in Adult Education from East Carolina University.

Glenda Copeland

Glenda Copeland is a Senior TA Consultant in the Education Program at AIR and the SECC State Liaison for Georgia. She works to build the capacity of state and regional education agencies to assist schools and districts in need of improvement. In this work, she oversees the planning and delivery of TA and training in Georgia. Her areas of expertise are mathematics, science, and school improvement. Working in other parts of the Southeast region, she assisted both the Mississippi and South Carolina SEAs in their review and revision of state instructional standards, curriculum documents, and units of study that are based on their state standards. She has assisted the Georgia Department of Education in identifying instructional improvement strategies, developing plans for PD in the use of those strategies for GaDOE staff who in turn work with local school staffs, designing an implementation plan for identified schools, and developing and implementing an evaluation plan to assess local implementation. She also participates in the development of portions of the state’s evaluation and professional learning processes for teachers and leaders, and provides feedback on ways to improve the processes, which are now being implemented throughout the state. She earned an M.A., Special Education, Gifted and Talented; M.A., Special Education, Mental Retardation; and B.S., Secondary Education, from University of Alabama.

Don Doggett

Don Doggett is a Senior TA Consultant with AIR’s Education Program and SECC State Liaison for South Carolina. He works to build the capacity of SEAs as they assist schools and districts. He leads efforts in needs sensing, planning, and coordinating the delivery of TA and training in South Carolina and other SECC states. He has more than 10 years of experience as both a principal and an assistant principal at the elementary and middle school level. As an administrator, he has guided instruction, developed professional learning communities, planned and facilitated staff development opportunities, managed district and state testing programs, recruited and evaluated staff, created afterschool programs, and coordinated mentoring programs and community partnerships. His interests include leadership, school improvement, school turnaround, reading and literacy, data-driven decision-making, change processes, professional learning communities, technology, and family and community engagement. His current doctoral work focuses on early literacy/early vocabulary development. He earned an M.Ed., Counseling and Guidance, and a B.A., Elementary Education, from Howard University.

Rita Ghazal

Rita Ghazal is a Senior TA Consultant in AIR’s Education Program and a staff member with the TXCC. She leads state projects and task forces on teacher quality and educator effectiveness, teacher mentoring and induction, and educator equity. She collaborates with SEAs and assists them in strengthening their capacity to support high-quality implementation of teacher quality initiatives, policies, and programs. She also supports states in their efforts to create and maintain strong connections among state agency work streams and improve alignment across programs and policies. As a project lead for TXCC, her work focuses on supporting the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in implementing, scaling up, and sustaining statewide initiatives, especially in the area of teacher quality and educator effectiveness. She managed and led Texas’ redesign of its teacher standards and evaluation system. She led all phases of the process including developing the research framework, process for revision, use of key research, best practices and approaches, consultant services management, stakeholder convenings, national frameworks alignment analyses, feedback input collection, and supported communication and information dissemination. She also serves as the TXCC liaison to the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, one of seven national content centers designed to supply research-based information to help states carry out federal and state education policies and programs. She earned an M.A. in Education Policy from Columbia University and B.A. in Elementary Education from University of Michigan.

Heidi Goertzen

Heidi Goertzen is a Senior TA Consultant with the Education Program at AIR. Dr. Goertzen’s current work involves building capacity through TA to SEAs served by SECC. She serves as the SECC State Liaison to the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) and leads and contributes to projects throughout the region. Her work focuses on SEA capacity building in strategic planning, program evaluation, and continuous improvement in the area of ELs. She also coordinates and participates in a data analytics project that supports the ALSDE research and development section with assessing the state’s strategic plan for education. Dr. Goertzen has extensive experience working at state and district levels providing leadership and expertise in ELs including the design and implementation of the ALSDE EL-professional development academy and EL school improvement coaching initiative. Her dissertation research explored teacher quality in terms of teacher qualifications, characteristics, and practices as they relate to ELs. She earned a Ph.D., Ed.S., M.Ed., Administration of Elementary and Secondary Education, from Auburn University; M.S.Ed., Language Education/ESL, from Indiana University; and a B.A., English, from University of Texas at Austin.

Beth Howard-Brown

Beth Howard-Brown is a Principal TA Consultant in the Education Program at AIR and directs the SECC, which addresses state and local capacity building in school improvement and key content areas, including reading/literacy, mathematics, science, the use of scientifically based research, PD and teacher quality, and instructional strategies for specific populations. She also oversees SEDL’s partnership with the REL Southeast at Florida State University. Dr. Howard-Brown has more than 20 years of experience working as an educator and assisting high schools in their reform efforts. She has served as a teacher, a coach, and an instructional leader in assisting staff in understanding and using local, state, and national data along with state and federal legislation to assess, monitor, and improve student achievement. Through her work, she has provided direct on-site TA to district- and school-level administrators and teachers in the areas of curriculum development, climate and culture, collaborative planning, and utilizing the best instructional practices for increasing student learning. Dr. Howard-Brown has worked in collaboration with the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) in providing direct support to low- performing schools and was instrumental in the development of the Palmetto Priority Schools/Turnaround initiative for the state. The initiative created a partnership zone for state-identified low-performing schools working to meet state and federal accountability standards. She earned an Ed.D., Curriculum and Instruction; Ed.S. and M.Ed., Educational Leadership, from the University of South Carolina, and M.Ed., Counselor Education and B.S., Mathematics Education, from South Carolina State University.

Jason LaTurner

Jason LaTurner is a Senior TA consultant with the Education Program at AIR and Interim Director of the TXCC. Dr. LaTurner’s work focuses on evaluation capacity building for SEAs. Through the SECC and TXCC, he consults with SEA staff on developing evaluation plans and employing appropriate quantitative and qualitative research methods to study the effectiveness of a range of district and school improvement programs. This work includes using state and national longitudinal data systems and assisting staff in creating data collection tools, analyzing evaluation results, and developing presentations and workshops for state and district audiences. Other work includes providing training for school districts and others in the use of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, focusing specifically on developing Innovation Configurations and helping systems use the Stages of Concern Questionnaire to guide decisions about implementation of new initiatives. Dr. LaTurner’s expertise as an evaluation researcher and project manager includes more than 10 years of experience in scoping, assessing, and managing programs in educational and nonprofit settings. This experience ranges from preK to post-baccalaureate levels and includes designing and implementing both large- and small-scale evaluation studies. He earned a Ph.D., Sociology, from University of Texas at Austin; M.A., Higher Education and Student Affairs, from Bowling Green State; and B.A., Sociology, from Purdue University.

Robyn Madison-Harris

Robyn Madison-Harris is a Senior TA Consultant with the Education Program at AIR. In her role with the SECC, Dr. Madison-Harris plans and delivers TA and PD to the states served by the center as well as assisting them with school improvement and turnaround efforts. Dr. Madison-Harris also serves as SECC liaison to the College and Career Readiness and Success Center. Her other responsibilities include assisting SECC clients with educational leadership development, leadership program review, accreditation rubric development, statewide system of support work, policy development, school improvement process revision, college and career preparedness, and Common Core State Standards alignment studies and pedagogical tutorial videos. She has more than five years of experience working with state and other education agencies to develop policy, training materials, and calculation tools related to accountability requirements in ESEA. Dr. Madison-Harris was a high school teacher for six years and taught English, African American literature and history, and publications. She earned an Ed.D., Organizational Leadership, from Nova Southeastern University; as well as an M.A., Administration and Supervision, and B.S., Secondary Education, from Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Erin McCann

Erin McCann is a Senior Researcher with the Education Program at AIR. Dr. McCann’s experience includes designing and implementing evaluation studies for federal, state, and local-level contracts with a general focus on examining factors that influence school turnaround initiatives and school improvement processes and practices. Dr. McCann currently leads a team of staff that provides research and evaluation TA to state and local educators. The work involves facilitating the development of logic models and evaluation plans, assisting in the creation of tools and timelines for data collection, and TA in analyzing, interpreting, and reporting evaluation results. She also develops presentations and workshops on evaluation topics for state and district audiences. Dr. McCann supervises the evaluation of the Southeast and Texas Comprehensive Centers and has led and/or worked collaboratively on a number of projects including evaluations of the Professional Teaching and Learning Cycle, Learning Forward’s (formerly the National Staff Development Council) Standards Assessment Inventory (SAI), and the effectiveness of teacher PD programs. Prior to her work with AIR, Dr. McCann was an evaluation consultant and taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, and Austin Community College. Dr. McCann holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin; M.Ed. in Counseling, Texas State University; and B.A. in Psychology, from University of Texas at Austin.

Debra L. Meibaum

Debra Meibaum is a Senior TA Consultant in AIR’s Education Program and serves as Mississippi State Liaison for the SECC. She oversees the planning and delivery of TA and PD in Mississippi and assists in providing these services to other states served by the center. She has 35 years of experience in providing PD and technical assistance to intermediate, state, and local educators on multiple educational topics, including school improvement, best practices for instruction, educator evaluation, Response to Intervention, English learners, parental involvement, peer coaching, team building, needs assessment, and the ESEA. She has conducted extensive reviews of ESEA related statutes, regulations, requirements, and guidance documents. Previously, she worked at the Mississippi Department of Education for 13 years, where she provided and directed services to local school districts on English learners, national origin desegregation, race desegregation, gender equity, and special education. She also worked in the Mississippi and Louisiana public school systems at the school and district levels. She is certified in Mississippi as an elementary administrator and special subject supervisor. She earned an M.A.T, Speech Pathology, from Tulane University and a B.A. in Elementary Education and Speech Correction from Southeastern Louisiana University.

Concepcion Molina

Concepcion Molina is a Senior TA Consultant in the Education Program at AIR. Dr. Molina supports systemic reform efforts in mathematics and assists state and intermediate education agencies in their efforts to implement ESEA. His areas of expertise are mathematics and leadership. Tasks and projects include the planning, design, and delivery of comprehensive center regional forums and meetings; assisting states with the revision of their content standards; and designing and delivering PD to state agency staff on topics such as mathematics content, high school dropout prevention and reform models, systemic school reform, and math instruction for English learners. At SEDL, Dr. Molina’s previous work has included using scientifically based research to guide the design, piloting, and delivery of mathematics PD to clients in the five-state Southwest Consortium for the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Teaching (SCIMAST) region. In addition, he collaborated with other educational organizations and assisted in the dissemination of information that supported and promoted SCIMAST work. Previously, Dr. Molina was a high school math teacher for 14 years. He also has prior experience in higher education as a college representative and minority recruiter with Texas A&M University-College Station. Dr. Molina earned an Ed.D. from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, an M.S. in Educational Administration from Corpus Christi State University, and a B.S. in Educational Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University-College Station.

John Spence

John Spence is a Senior TA Consultant in the Education Program at AIR. He has over 17 years of experience directing large-scale initiatives in public education with a solid track record of expanding operations, initiating and maintaining strategic partnerships, managing technical assistance and PD for educators, developing and sustaining meaningful relationships with key decision makers, supervising teams, writing and delivering reports, and presenting at regional, state, national, and international conferences. As the Deputy Director and State Liaison for TXCC, he coordinates with TEA staff to build capacity for the implementation and administration of programs under ESEA. He leads TXCC’s work supporting the Texas Expanded Learning Opportunities Council, the Texas Equity Plan, and he serves as a team member on the Texas Principal Evaluation and Support System. He is actively involved in supporting the Concerns-Based Adoption Model as a certified Levels of Use interviewer, and he leads an organizational initiative at AIR to provide coaching and team development using the Clifton StrengthsFinder. He earned an M.A. in History from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a B.A. in History with High Honors from Bates College.