JULIE KOWAL is a senior consultant with Public Impact. She consults and leads teams to offer research-based guidance on several challenging policy and management issues in education, including teacher quality, evaluation, retention and compensation, and dramatic change in persistently underperforming schools.  Ms. Kowal recently led Public Impact’s involvement in several states’ applications for the federal Race to the Top competition.  She also serves as editor for all Public Impact publications. An alumna of AmeriCorps NCCC and Public Allies DC, Ms. Kowal earned her law degree with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In the area of school restructuring, Ms. Kowal’s recent work includes advising the state of Tennessee on the creation of its Achievement School District; assisting the Colorado Department of Education in the development of a system to address chronically failing schools, evaluate external education service providers, and increase teacher and leader effectiveness; examining the school turnaround initiative in Chicago Public Schools; and conducting an evaluation of the School Turnaround Specialist Program at the University of Virginia.  Her recent publications on school restructuring include cross-sector studies of successful turnarounds, guidance for districts on supporting successful turnarounds, and case studies of schools that restructured under NCLB. Ms. Kowal is a featured expert on school turnarounds for the US Department of Education’s Doing What Works website, and has led several workshops with school, district, state, and federal leaders on fostering successful turnarounds.

Ms. Kowal’s recent research on the critical role of human capital in education includes cross-sector solutions for attracting teachers to hard-to-staff positions and studies of teacher compensation in private and charter schools for the Center for American Progress; studies of innovative teacher and principal preparation programs; and cross-sector lessons for retaining high-performers. She has also facilitated partnerships between states and national human capital providers, guided the development of a statewide agenda for improving teacher quality in Indiana, and served as an expert panelist for a national initiative to retain generation Y teachers.

Contact Julie Kowal