The Delta Foundation Selects Project Director For New Teacher Efficacy Program

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Delta Research and Educational Foundation (DREF) has selected Dr. Johni Cruse-Craig to lead The Delta Teacher Efficacy Campaign, the recently launched educational initiative that focuses on teacher effectiveness and student achievement.  The Georgia middle school science teacher with extensive experience in leadership development is charged with directing the three-year, national program. 

The Delta Teacher Efficacy Campaign, a collaborative between DREF and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. is underwritten by a matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to DREF. "The collaboration between DREF and the Sorority emanates from our joint commitment to ensure that all students are educated in a manner that prepares them to enter and excel in college and ultimately create a thriving life and career for themselves," said Alison J. Harmon, Ed.D., president, DREF Board of Directors.

"Dr. Cruse-Craig brings a wealth of vital experience, theoretical and tactical to the Delta Teacher Efficacy Campaign.  Our program aims to increase student achievement through effective teaching. She has the expertise to direct our program to successfully achieve its goal of realizing effective teaching and student academic success," said Patricia Watkins Lattimore, DREF chief executive officer.

Throughout her 17-year career as an educator, Dr. Cruse-Craig has held key roles including service as a middle school science and mathematics teacher in Georgia and North Carolina schools, Race to the Top Teacher Effectiveness Facilitator, curriculum and instruction specialist, assessment, data analysis leader, process improvement and performance engagement leader.

Most recently, she served as Science Department Chair and Grade Level Science Lead Teacher for the DeKalb County School District.  She increased the number of students meeting the expectations in the science department and successfully established instructional direction by analyzing and prioritizing student achievement data. 

Dr. Cruse-Craig remarked, "My passion runs deep and is like a consuming fire that radiates and transfers into my every thought… I am humbly grateful to serve in such a capacity, as this is a calling and not a job."

In 2011, Dr. Cruse-Craig earned a doctorate degree in educational leadership and instruction from Argosy University in Atlanta, GA, a master's degree in middle grades mathematics and science from Brenau University, Gainesville, GA. and began her undergraduate studies at Shaw University, Raleigh, NC.  For more details, visit www.deltafoundation.net.

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SOURCE The Delta Research and Educational Foundation