James Colyott

James Colyott is a senior TA consultant at AIR with over twenty years of experience in rural district and school leadership, monitoring, and improvement. Colyott is currently the project director for the Developing a Statewide School Improvement Implementation Monitoring Tool Project with the Wyoming Department of Education, the project lead for the Iowa Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds project and the Iowa Needs Assessment Review project, and the recruitment and implementation lead for the Coach.Teach.Write project with the National Writing Project. 

Previously, Colyott was the project lead for the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Project with the Illinois State Board of Education, the dissemination lead for the MyTeachingPartner Project with Learning Forward, the implementation lead for the Coaching with Impact project with Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching Group, and the lead site coordinator for the Professional Learning with Impact project with the Danielson Group. Through the Midwest Comprehensive Center at AIR, Colyott was the project lead for the Iowa Equity Review Project, collaborating with the Iowa Department of Education on its efforts to eliminate achievement and opportunity gaps among students. Through the District and School Improvement at AIR, Colyott was an executive leadership coach for rural and urban superintendents and principals in Illinois. 

Before joining AIR in 2015, Colyott had more than 20 years of experience in Illinois rural public schools, serving 7 years as a district superintendent, 6 years as a school principal, and 8 years as a teacher. Through intensive district improvement planning, a clear focus on financial resource allocations and transparency, and promoting dual enrollment coursework in collaboration with local institutions of higher learning, he led a small rural high school with a large low-income population to the top 6% of all Illinois high schools in overall academic achievement. He also led a large rural Illinois high school to the top 500 high schools in the U.S. in college and career readiness.