Dr. Meredith Honig

Meredith Honig is a Professor of Education Policy, Organizations, and Leadership at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she is also the Director of the District Leadership Design Lab (DL2, dl2.education.uw.edu) and an Adjunct Professor of Public Affairs. Her research, teaching, and district partnerships focus on disrupting inequities in school district central offices and transforming core central office work to ensure equitable teaching and learning—that which centers, values, and elevates the knowledge, cultures, and success of students identifying as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, students of color, or living in low-income circumstances. Her work recognizes that barriers to educational equity are systemic, that school district central office leaders are in strategic positions to lead systemic change for equity, and that research and particular design approaches can support their leadership.

Meredith findings have been published in such journals as Educational Researcher, the American Educational Research Journal, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and funded by The Wallace Foundation The Spencer Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and other sources. Her books include Supervising principals for instructional leadership: A teaching and learning approach (2020) and From tinkering to transformation: How school district central offices drive equitable teaching and learning (Forthcoming, 2023), both published by Harvard Education Press.

In 2014, Meredith established the District Leadership Design Lab (DL2) to generate new knowledge and resources for central office leaders. Currently, through DL2, Meredith runs the Central Office Transformation for Equity Network (the “Central Office TEN”), which brings together teams from 6 districts across the country to support each other’s central office transformation efforts. With Dan Goldhaber, she leads the Central Office Human Resources Transformation (COHRT) network, which helps Washington State HR directors use the latest research and data to advance teaching quality and teacher diversity.

Between 2012-18, Meredith directed the UW Leadership for Learning (Ed.D., superintendent certification) program which, in 2016, won the Exemplary Leadership Education Program award from the University Council for Educational Administration. Prior to joining the UW faculty, Meredith was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has worked at the California Department of Education and in other state and local youth-serving agencies. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an A.B. from Brown University.