James Lane

About James

• I went to college for music and started my career playing music in a few bands before my wife and I decided to get married and plant roots.
• I got a job as a band director at a school in Durham, North Carolina—when I started, there were only 25 kids in the band, and when I left five years later, over half the school was in the program.
• After witnessing the impact that my program had on the students, I knew I wanted to become a principal and make sure every classroom in a school had that same impact.
• I got my first principalship a few years later and really put my efforts into growing my teachers’ skills to create the greatest impact on students.
• I then decided that I wanted to be able to scale that impact to every school in the district, so I worked to become the district’s superintendent.
• I eventually ended up serving as superintendent in Chesterfield, Virginia, one of the largest school districts in the nation, which then led to me becoming the state superintendent of Virginia.
• After my term, I got the call from the Biden-Harris administration to serve as assistant secretary over the office of elementary and secondary education.
• I spent a couple of years as acting assistant secretary before making the transition to PDK International because I missed working directly with students and teachers.