Mira Education connects the dots between people and practices in P20 education — creating new potential to guide sustainable change, innovation, and improvement.

[Chapel Hill, N.C., May 11, 2023] – Mira Education, a design and implementation partner, is evolving its brand to emphasize its focus on collective leadership that helps P20 education entities see new solutions and create sustainable, systemwide improvement in school systems and organizations.

Mira Education’s partners – K12 districts, higher education institutions, and fellow education nonprofits and associations – already hold innovative ideas and tremendous resources within their systems. Using research-based collective leadership strategies, partners can clarify opportunities for meaningful improvement, build capacity, design and implement shifts that address root causes, and engage educators in every role as co-owners of these new approaches.

Making sustainable change in complex educational systems is only possible with commitment from educators in all roles. To that end, Mira Education applies a collective leadership framework for understanding conditions and influencing practices that support improvement, resilience, and leadership growth. This research-based approach provides a lens for administrators and teachers to create co-ownership and shared influence – energizing how improvements are made and aligning with existing resources.

The impact of collective leadership is visible across Mira Education’s work nationally:

  • After engaging in collective leadership approaches, 57% more educators were likely to self-identify as leaders in their schools.
  • More than 70 partners have designed and implemented new strategies with sustained advancement in achievement gaps, coaching, instruction, school improvement, and leadership models.
  • In South Carolina, more than 4,500 students were taught by diverse, well-coached teacher candidates through the CarolinaCAP pathway.
  • More than 200 teams developed micro-credentials aligned with national best-practice standards to assess expertise in literacy, leadership, DEI, and more.

“Schools and systems have already invested in staff expertise, learning, and programs that are poised to make a difference – if their teams have a shared vision on how those are used and reimagined when needed,” said Mira Education President Alesha Daughtrey. “We help our partners’ teams connect the dots among people, practices, and existing resources to better address the challenges and opportunities ahead. Collective leadership unleashes educators’ expertise to solve problems and serve each student better and more equitably.”

Mira Education’s services include design and implementation of personalized professional learning systems, leadership capacity building, and impact assessment and storytelling. These approaches share an underlying structure that draws on collective leadership practices to design innovation and improvement work, implement to show impact, and sustain effective changes in practice and systems for the future.

Ann Byrd, former Mira Education president and now Mira Education partner as executive director of SC TEACHER at the University of South Carolina, points to the benefit of collective leadership when navigating the challenges of organizational growth and change. “When leaders nurture a collective culture, external and internal challenges – whether a profound disruption like a pandemic or a more predictable leadership change – can be leveraged as opportunities to improve rather than challenges to survive.”

For more information on how Mira Education can help your organization design and implement collectively led improvement and innovation efforts, contact us.