Laura E. Weeldreyer, a Baltimore educator, consultant, public school administrator and state school board member, has been named chief program officer of Talent Development Secondary, a school improvement model at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Social Organization of Schools.

Weeldreyer will be in charge of day-to-day operations for the evidence-based program, which partners with more than 40 schools in 14 cities, the District of Columbia and Guam. She will oversee nearly 100 employees based in Baltimore and in field offices across the country, including New York, Miami, Chicago, San Antonio and Seattle. She replaces Douglas Elmer who took a position in Kansas City early this year.

“I am proud and excited to join the fantastic team at TDS,” she said. “I am most excited to work directly with middle and high schools to help push the boundaries on what is possible from our schools, our principals, our teachers, and our kids nationally.”

Most recently, Weeldreyer was a senior consultant for Urban Policy Design, a Baltimore management consulting firm, where she worked nationally on a variety of education reform projects with school systems, state departments of education, and non-profit organizations.

For 11 years, she was an employee of the Baltimore City Public Schools, holding several positions at the central office. She was deputy chief of staff to the chief executive officer and executive director of the Office of New Initiatives, overseeing the development of innovation schools and the charter school application and renewal processes. Before working for BCPS, Weeldreyer taught school in both Baltimore and New Orleans.

Talent Development Secondary is one of the oldest school reform models in the country, developed over the last 22 years at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. Talent Development Secondary has worked with hundreds of schools, many in high-poverty neighborhoods, serving thousands of students. It has been a leader in the use of early warning indicators to identify struggling students and get them on track to graduation.

Weeldreyer will join Talent Development Secondary on April 15.