Stacey Caillier, Ph.D. is Director of the National Coalition for Improvement in Education (NCIE) at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. NCIE designs, facilitates, and coaches networked improvement communities that bring districts together to tackle shared problems of practice and drive system change through continuous improvement. Our networks have measurably reduced chronic absenteeism, narrowed opportunity gaps in math achievement, and increased college enrollment and financial aid completion for priority students across California. NCIE also hosts the annual Summit on Improvement in Education as a rallying point for the field of educational improvers and innovators.
Stacey has been with the GSE since its inception in 2006. Before leading NCIE, she directed the Center for Research on Equity and Innovation and the Deeper Learning Hub, and earlier served as Director of the Teacher Leadership M.Ed. program and Co-Director of Instructional Support for HTH schools. She is passionate about the potential for practice-oriented forms of research like improvement science, action research, and design thinking to transform schools by empowering educators and students to work together toward more equitable and engaging learning environments.
Prior to coming to High Tech High, she completed her doctorate at UC Davis in School Organization and Educational Policy, where she collaborated with teachers to design and implement an action research project that led to school-wide reforms. As a graduate teaching fellow at UC Davis, an adjunct faculty member in Hamline University’s Graduate School of Education, and a program leader at HTH GSE, Stacey has advised graduate research projects, mentored new teachers and leaders, and taught courses in improvement science, action research, and leadership for school change. Her research interests include liberatory improvement science as a mechanism for school and system change, improvement networks, distributed leadership, and student agency.
Stacey began her career as a high school physics and math teacher at a Portland, Oregon high school affiliated with the Coalition of Essential Schools. Stacey majored in physics and English at Willamette University, where she also earned a Master’s in Teaching and a secondary physics and math credential.
Outside of work, Stacey parents two neurodivergent young boys, gets outside as much as she can (ideally in or around water), sings, and cooks. In a past life before kids, she was the pastry chef for an underground supper club.
