Sybil Madison-Boyd

Sybil Madison-Boyd is the Director of School and Leadership Development for the USI Network. She directs the USI Network and leads its core team. Sybil provides instructional leadership coaching to principals and their teams. She leads the Academic and Social Support Learning group, a professional community for USI Network social support providers focused on developing proactive approaches to address barriers to learning. And, with Kyle Westbrook, designs and leads the Principal Fellows Program, a professional seminar designed to support principals in developing effective strategies for improving student learning “at scale” in their buildings. Sybil helped design and launch the USI Network with Julie Burnett in 2005.

Sybil has worked in urban, public schools for almost 20 years. This work began with teacher consultation in support of individual children and broadened to include collaborations with teachers and principals to create systemic approaches for supporting student success. Before joining the Urban Education Institute in 2003, Sybil was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Juvenile Research, where her work included developing school-based prevention programs and conducting classroom-based qualitative research.

Sybil earned her doctoral and Master’s degrees in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her dissertation examined the impact of the 1959-1964 Prince Edward County public school closing on individuals who were high school students at the time. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, with honors, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sybil’s interests include developing innovative approaches to the acceleration of student learning with depth and at scale, redesigning the role of social supports in schools, and understanding “rigor” as an issue of equity.