All Americans want great schools, affordable health care, safe neighborhoods, and good jobs.
Since 1946, AIR has worked with federal, state, and local governments to improve the lives of everyday American citizens in the areas of education, health, and the workforce—from evaluating the quality of nursing homes to finding out what works so our students can compete on a global stage.
We look forward to continuing this work in the coming years and well into the future.
Lisa Lachlan is a managing director at AIR. Dr. Lachlan has nearly two decades of experience as an expert in educator effectiveness and the professional growth of teachers and leaders. She serves as the director of the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) at AIR where she spearheads support to state and local education agencies on the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of educator quality. Under her leadership, the GTL Center has amplified its reach to 1.6 million policymakers and practitioners through targeted communication and dissemination plans leveraging social media to curate and elevate evidence-based practices across the country. Her vision has expanded the GTL portfolio to serve all 50 states and US territories with technical assistance focused on all aspects of the talent development continuum including: compensation reform, workforce shortages, teacher leadership, teacher well-being and working conditions, comprehensive mentoring and induction, and professional learning on high-leverage practices.
Dr. Lachlan has served as a respected subject matter expert for 7 National Centers, 10 Regional Comprehensive Centers, 3 Regional Education Laboratories, and is regularly asked to present to national audiences on educator workforce issues. For the last 4 years, she has served as a partner to the National Comprehensive Center supporting initiatives on educator apprenticeships and grow your own programs. Her work consistently results in widely used resources aimed to support SEAs, LEAs, and EPPs in using evidence-based practices to support the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of professional learning systems for educators. While her work has national reach, it is grounded in partnerships with local practitioners through 1) research to practice/policy projects like the University of North Carolina General Administration’s Study of Beginning Teacher Needs and the The Impact of $10,000 bonuses on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai’i and 2) evidence-based practice to policy projects like Jefferson County Public School’s Accelerating the Success of Improvement Schools, Hawai’i Department of Education Data Driven Conversations for Equitable Access, and Kokomo Indiana’s Mentoring and Induction in High-Need Schools.
Her vision is grounded in evidence-based practices and the continuous improvement of policies, programs, and practices for the educator workforce: “How Districts and States are Addressing Teacher Turnover”, Flipping the Readiness Paradigm: Tailoring Programs to Address the Achievement Gap and Teacher Shortages in High-Need Schools, Evidence-Based Practices to Support Quality: A Snapshot on Mentoring and Induction, Learner-ready to expert practitioner: Academy supports teachers’ transitions in the Learning Professional, Targeted comprehensive induction for urban educators: An exploration of teacher motivation and retention in the New Educator, and The evolution of new teacher induction policy: Support, specificity, and autonomy in the journal Educational Policy. Under her leadership, AIR and the GTL Center continue to strategically partner with federal centers, equity centers, regional education laboratories, regional comprehensive centers, other national non-profit organizations and associations, state education agencies and district teams to leverage the collective expertise of the education community in the development, implementation and evaluation of education workforce initiatives.
