Name: Marsha Modeste
Title: Assistant Professor of Education (Educational Leadership)
Department: Education Policy Studies
Phone: 814-863-3775
Email: mem67@psu.edu
Office address: 204C Rackley Building
Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-marsha-modeste
Modeste’s research focuses on school leadership across three areas: (1) district governance, specifically urban districts under system-wide reform; (2) the policy and cultural environment that informs school leadership; and (3) distributed leadership. Her dissertation research focused on urban school principals in New York City. She examined the ways in which school leaders interpreted and implemented in their schools the reform policies that came from the school system’s central office.
Modeste’s work with the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) has taken her to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she has led the expansion and implementation of CALL, an online, formative assessment of distributed leadership practices, in schools and districts (municipalities) under reform. A former middle school teacher and central office program director, her work focuses on organizational change in urban school districts using mayoral control and how system-wide school reform impacts urban school leadership.
Modeste earned her doctorate in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.