Tim Boals, PhD. WIDA Founder/ Senior Principal Investigator

Tim leads thought leadership initiatives as WIDA. This includes organizing and facilitating symposia throughout the year that bring educational leaders to Madison, Wisconsin, for conversations around timely topics in our field. He also participates in WIDA's leadership group and advises WIDA's new executive director, Jenni Torres.

Tim presents a conferences and meetings in the U.S. and internationally on WIDA, WIDA language standards and assessments, on increasing access to high-quality curriculum, and ensuring meaningful engagement for learning for multilingual learners. He also publishes articles and contributes to scholarly and teacher-oriented books on multilingual learner instruction and assessment frequently. He has been the Principal Investigator on n umerous large grants over the years from the U.S. Department of Education and foundation funders.

Tim holds a PhD in curriculum from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an emphasis in the education of multilingual learners. His background includes language education, educational policy, classroom assessment and Spanish language and literature, including work as a bilingual/ ESL and world languages teacher. He has led bilingual/ ESL programs in two state departments of education (Indiana and Wisconsin), during which time he advocated for reforms in instruction and assessment at the local level and engaged in federal and state policy work. 

2025 Pre-Conference Keyshop Speaker