Lisa Hood

Biography

Dr. Lisa K. Hood is Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University, where she leads a comprehensive portfolio of research, evaluation, and policy initiatives aimed at strengthening P–12 education systems. With nearly three decades of experience, she has built an exceptional record of rigorous, policy-relevant scholarship that informs decision-making at the national, state, and local levels.

She currently serves as research and evaluation director for multiple U.S. Department of Education–funded initiatives, including Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants focused on principal and instructional leadership team development. In these roles, she designs and oversees comprehensive evaluation frameworks examining fidelity of implementation, leadership practice, and school improvement outcomes, while also guiding continuous improvement strategies.

Her methodological expertise spans qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches, and she has led large-scale studies of educator and school leader preparation for more than 20 years—employing surveys, focus groups, interviews, and longitudinal analyses to generate findings that directly inform state-level policy reforms and professional development systems across Illinois.Beyond her evaluation and research leadership,

Dr. Hood has played a sustained role in education policy development, serving on and staffing numerous statewide advisory committees focused on data systems, educator preparation, certification, and early childhood systems integration. Her contributions have helped shape landmark legislation in Illinois, redefining principal preparation and mentoring at scale—most notably, her work was instrumental in making Illinois the first state in the nation to expand the principal endorsement to encompass the early childhood years, establishing a true P–12 framework for school leadership.

She is an experienced grant writer and principal investigator whose work has contributed to more than $50 million in federal, state, and foundation funding. Her scholarship includes peer-reviewed journal articles, edited volumes, policy reports, and federally submitted evaluation reports. She is co-author of Reforming Principal Preparation at the State Level: Perspectives on Policy Reform in Illinois (2019), which chronicles the partnerships and strategies that led to the redesign of principal preparation standards and regulations in Illinois.

Dr. Hood holds a doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with advanced training in qualitative and mixed-methods research, program evaluation, and policy analysis.