Kathleen Budge is an associate professor of Educational Leadership in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Department where her research and scholarly activity focuses on educational poverty, rural education, and leadership development. She has conducted numerous presentations at national and state conferences as well as published articles on these topics in such well-respected journals as The Journal of Research in Rural Education, Education Policy Analysis Archive, American Journal of Education, and Educational Leadership. She is co-author of the award-winning book Turning High Poverty Schools Into High Performing Schools (ASCD, 2012).
Kathleen is also coordinator of the Executive Educational Leadership Program at Boise State University. She has led the development of two innovative, non-traditional leadership preparation programs during her tenure at Boise State. The purpose of both programs is to develop leaders who have the commitment and capabilities to lead schools and school districts where all students succeed. From 2011-2015, she was co-director of the Idaho Leads Project, the goal of which is to prepare all Idaho students for success in the 21st Century by strengthen leadership capacity in Idaho’s K-12 schools and districts and enhancing the advancement of educational improvement in Idaho’s communities.
Kathleen earned her doctorate from the University of Washington in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in 2005. She was selected to participate in Leadership for Learning, an innovative, cohort-based program that emphasized the link between leadership and learning, as well as the development of leaders willing and able to address and redress issues of equity and social justice.Her consultancies include state departments, boards of education, state and regional service providers, as well as school districts throughout the US. Dedicated to improving educational outcomes for all children, particularly those less advantaged, she has been instrumental in the acquisition of nearly 10 million dollars in grants and contracts to advance this aim.
Prior to joining the faculty at Boise State, Kathleen served as the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning at Educational Service District 113 in Olympia, Washington. She provided leadership to forty-five, predominately rural, school districts serving approximately 77, 000 students. She led the development of a highly successful regional job-embedded professional development model and facilitated data-based improvement planning with more than 150 schools. Her leadership was recognized through being awarded the Washington Association of School Administrator’s (WASA) Regional President’s Award, the WASA Award of Merit, and the Washington Association of Educational Service Districts President’s Award for significant contribution to the state’s educational service agencies.
Additionally, she served as a Washington State Distinguished Educator/School Improvement Specialist providing training and consultation to superintendents, central office administrators, building principals and teacher-leaders in schools spanning grades preschool-12, and varying in size, demographics, and geographical location. She was a member of the Statewide School Improvement Technical Assistance Council and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Curriculum Advisory and Review Committee, as well as a contributing author to the School System Improvement Guide and the Washington State School Improvement Planning Guide both published by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia, Washington.
During her twenty-six years in P-12 education, she also served as a district curriculum director, an elementary principal, and an elementary and special education teacher. She continues to maintain that her most important and significant work has been teaching first graders to read.