James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin professor in learning and organizational change at Northwestern University. He teaches in both the Learning Sciences and Human Development and Social Policy graduate programs in the School of Education and Social Policy, and is a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. Spillane’s work explores the policy implementation process at the state, school district, school, and classroom levels, focusing on intergovernmental relations and relations between policy and school leaders’ and teachers’ practice. He is author of Standards Deviation: How Local Schools Miss-Understand Policy and Distributed Leadership. Dr. Spillane is director of Northwestern University’s Multi-disciplinary Program in Education Sciences, a pre-doctoral training program involving students from economics, human development and social policy, learning sciences, psychology, and sociology. Spillane received a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholars Award from the New Zealand Fulbright Committee in 2002. Spillane is also Principal Investigator of the Distributed Leadership Studies, a program of research funded by the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation and Institute for Education Sciences. This work involves empirical investigations of the practice of school leadership. Spillane serves on the editorial board of numerous national and international journals. Dr. Spillane received his B.S from the National University of Ireland and Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1993.