Lesley Muldoon

Since 2019, Lesley Muldoon has served as Executive Director of the National Assessment Governing Board (Governing Board), an independent, nonpartisan board created by Congress to set policy for the Nation’s Report Card (also called the National Assessment for Educational Progress, or NAEP). As Executive Director, she leads implementation of the Governing Board’s policy priorities, manages its staff, and oversees its annual budget of $8.3 million.

Muldoon joined the Governing Board with a charge to enhance NAEP’s value to the nation as a catalyst for action by policymakers and practitioners to improve student learning—and to innovate NAEP and maintain its relevance in a changing education landscape. During her tenure, the Governing Board achieved bipartisan consensus on the first major updates in more than a decade to the NAEP reading, mathematics, and science assessments; launched a new Strategic Vision to chart the future of NAEP in an era of rapid technological and societal change; and released the nation’s most authoritative and widely-covered studies on the impacts of the pandemic on student academic progress.

She partners with the 26 members of the Governing Board and a range of education stakeholders at the national, state, and local levels to advance the Board’s legislatively-mandated responsibilities and to support the use of NAEP to improve education for students.

From 2010 to 2017, Muldoon served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff at the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of two multi-state consortia that developed K-12 assessment systems designed to be the centerpiece of state education reform initiatives. She also worked at CenterPoint Education Solutions, where she served as chief of policy and advocacy from 2017-2019, and Achieve—a nonpartisan, nonprofit education-reform organization—in multiple roles. Earlier in her career, she supported the 12^th Congressional district of New Jersey on Capitol Hill.

Muldoon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from the University of Maryland and a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University. She is a New Jersey native and the proud parent of three elementary school students in the DC Public Schools.