Paul Leather

Paul Leather is the Partner for Policy and Local and State Partnerships for the Center of Innovation in Education, C!E, and directs the Interstate Learning Community for the Center for Innovation in Education, C!E, in collaboration with the State Performance Assessment Learning Community sponsored by LPI.

Mr. Leather’s background and experience in Education, Counseling, and Administration in New Hampshire and Nationally spans four decades. Among his roles, he has served as the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Education in New Hampshire, as well as the NH State Director of the Division of Career Technology and Adult Learning, overseeing numerous statewide initiatives and programs. In 1997, Mr. Leather began a journey to create a NH state model for competency-based education. This effort resulted in the development and implementation of the NH student mastery system now central to NH’s High School graduation requirements. More recently, he led the development of a first-in-the-nation next generation educational assessment and accountability model, “Performance Assessment of Competency Education,” PACE, first approved as a pilot program by the US Department of Education in March 2015.  Later this effort formed the foundation of NH’s Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority approval. In leading the C!E sponsored Interstate Learning Community, Mr. Leather has supported SEAs, intermediary organizations, and local districts across fifteen states as they develop innovative assessment and accountability systems. Mr Leather has also worked as part of the C!E team to support states, districts, and schools to implement inclusive design processes to address community inclusion, empathic listening to community need, reciprocal expectations of local and state concerns, and the co-creation of multi-level systems design.