Download high-resolution photoDonald J. Peurach, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation and a professor of educational policy, leadership, and innovation in the University of Michigan’s School of Education. His research examines large-scale, network-based educational improvement initiatives, focusing specifically on how these networks continuously learn and improve over time.

Don is the co-leader, with Jennifer Lin Russell, of the Improvement Scholars Network, a Carnegie-initiated invisible college of over 200+ researchers collaborating to advance improvement research in academic, policy, and professional communities; a co-founder of the AERA Improvement Science Special Interest Group; and the lead developer of Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement, a U-M/Carnegie collaboration that uses massive open online courses on the edX platform to provide a comprehensive introduction to improvement science.

Don is the author of Seeing Complexity in Public Education: Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All (2011, Oxford University Press); co-author of Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (2014, University of Chicago Press), and a co-editor of The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education (2022; Rowman and Littlefield).