Amy Colton, PhD, MI State Co-Coordinator, lives in Region 8 in Ann Arbor, MI, and has 40 years of experience working as an educational consultant with ED, SEAs, LEAs, and nonprofit professional organizations and universities on program, process, and product development, implementation, and evaluation. As a senior consultant for Learning Forward, the only membership association focused solely on the role of high-quality professional learning, Dr. Colton provides customized learning experiences that meet the unique needs of schools or systems. She is also created online courses to develop the capacity of Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) personnel , a discretionary grant program to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.

As executive director of Learning Forward MI, a Learning Forward state affiliate, she builds collaborative relationships with leading experts and organizations to develop professional learning programs and policies. Under ten years of her leadership the organization has developed and facilitated courses on cultural proficiency, teacher leadership, and collaborative inquiry in schools and districts across MI. She also has served on many state department and professional organization committees, including one of Michigan’s stakeholder ESEA plan review committees, the Michigan Department of Education’s Micro-credentialing Stakeholder Meeting and Professional Learning Stakeholder Committee and the Michigan Assessment Consortium’s Early Literacy Assessment System principal contributor group.

Dr. Colton’s state work includes policy, procedure, and program development as an educational consultant with MDE. During her 5 years at MDE she led the development of the Office of Special Education’s District Self-Review Process for disproportionality which was in response to a federal mandate to determine whether significant disproportionality was occurring in an LEA.

As a contractor with the American Institute of Research, Dr. Colton shared, with MDE< best practices in professional learning and co-coordinated the development of the MDE’s electronic Individual Plan for Professional Growth Template, the Michigan Policy and Standards for Professional Learning, and Partnership for Success.

Dr. Colton has worked collaboratively with the Kentucky Department of Education to scale up the use of evidence-based practices in professional learning in the state’s classrooms. As a teacher-in-residence for the National Board for Professional Teaching she coordinated efforts to develop the performance teaching standards and performance assessments with leading teachers and scholars. She developed policy and monitored contracts with national assessment laboratories. Early in her career, Dr. Colton directed the federally funded, award-winning undergraduate program called Collaboration of the Improvement of Teacher Education. She worked collaboratively with university faculty and classroom teachers to increase the quality and effectiveness of pre-service experience. Dr. Colton shared evidence-based practices with faculty for course design, managed the federal grant, and coordinated field-placements of pre-service students. Her work appears in books and peer reviewed articles.