Who We Are

Instructional Empowerment is led by founder and CEO Michael D. Toth and a core team that has worked together for decades. Our headquarters is a 10,000-square-foot office located outside of Pittsburgh at 175 Cornell Rd, Blairsville, PA 15717.

We are a national organization, serving all 50 states and some international partners. We have 150+ full-time and contracted employees.

We Believe in the Power of Schools to Change Students’ Lives

Instructional Empowerment’s social mission is to end generational poverty and eliminate racial achievement gaps through transformed core instruction.

We partner with school and district leaders to build your school’s capacity and instructional systems. Our goal is for schools to achieve rapid, measurable, long-term outcomes for their students by focusing on rigorous classroom instruction and school advancement

Learn more about why our founder, Michael Toth, is passionate about breaking generational poverty.

Our Applied Research Center Invests in Your Success

We are so serious about our social mission that we founded our own independent Applied Research Center.

Our research center verifies every project using the most exacting federal research standards. We ensure our methods work in every school and every classroom in all the different communities that our partner schools serve.

Our Applied Research Center’s Commitment to You:

  • Rigorous methodologies
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Replicable results
  • Continuous improvement

Our Founder and CEO

Michael D. Toth is founder and CEO of Instructional Empowerment and leads IE’s Applied Research Center. He is the multi-award-winning author of The Power of Student Teams with David Sousa; author of Who Moved My Standards; and co-author with Robert Marzano of several books. Michael also speaks at national conferences and serves as an executive coach for superintendents and district cabinets.

IE’s social mission is personal to Michael, as he experienced poverty as a child.

Read more about Michael’s story on the Founder’s Page

Our Executive Team

Melissa About

Melissa Bloom, Ed.D.
President

Lina Toth

Lina Toth
Chief Operating Officer

James Voyer

James Voyer
Chief Financial Officer

Our National Expert Educators
and Highly Skilled Faculty

Our national expert educators are passionate about helping you reach your goals by applying their deep knowledge of IE’s instructional systems and methodologies and their experience from years of practical work in schools and districts across the country.

Instructional Empowerment goes to great lengths to provide the best school leadership coaches to our partner schools. We are honored to have an amazing faculty of former highly successful district leaders, school leaders, and teacher leaders. Every one of our leadership coaches has served as successful school or district leaders and is trained extensively in our metrics and methods.

MicrosoftTeams

Michelle Fitzgerald, Ed.D.

Executive Director, School Advancement

Emerge and Elevate Pathways

Penny Sell

Penny Sell, M.Ed.

Executive Director, School Advancement

Enhance Pathway

Deana

Deana Senn, M.S.S.E.

Executive Director, Model of Instruction

Model of Instruction

Meg Bowen

Marguerite “Meg” Bowen, M.Ed.

Executive Director, Customer Experience
and Growth

Lindsay Elliott

Lindsay Elliott, Ed.D.

Field Director, School Advancement

Emerge and Elevate Pathways

Kimberly Harris

Kimberly Harris, M.Ed.

Field Director, School Advancement

Enhance Pathway

Jody Headshot

Jody Honaker, B.S.E.

Field Director, Model of Instruction

Model of Instruction

Explore Our Partnered Solutions

Talk to an Expert Educator

Our Mission is for All Students, Teachers, and Leaders to Thrive

To us, “Instructional Empowerment” means that all students, teachers, and leaders thrive in a rigorous learning environment that builds agency. We believe schools can become true learning organizations with a flourishing learning culture for the adults and the students. We’re determined to bring the instructional systems of empowerment and the empowered learning culture of the Empowerment Destination to every school that wants to achieve it, for every student.

If you believe what we believe, we hope you’ll join us to make the teaching and learning process more empowering for every child and educator.

A Sample of Our Strategic Partners

We work with a wide range of school districts, from some of the largest to smaller districts, and our partner schools include those with persistently low achievement scores to schools with higher performance that want to become even better. Our comprehensive school advancement services are tailored solutions that match the need of our partner schools and the communities they serve, centered around rigorous Tier 1 core instruction.

Bullhead City School District
Chicago Public Schools
D11 Colorado Springs Schools Inspire every mind
Gadsden City Schools
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Hillsborough County PUBLIC SCHOOLS Preparing Students for Life
Kayenta Unified School District
Lawerence township
COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT
MISD Midland Independent School District
N NORTHWEST LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
Oklahoma City PUBLIC SCHOOLS
SCHOOL DIS THE PALM DISTRIC RICT BEACH COUNT
SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PONTIAC THE CITYS
RED MESA Unified School District
SOUT BEND SB SCHOOLS
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ING COUNTY SC WYO HOOLS