About Covariant Education

Founded by Alan Coverstone

Educator, Advocate, and Leader in Learner-centered Design

Alan Coverstone is an educator, leader, and consultant who has worked for over 30 years to advance educational equity and catalyze for change in K12 and higher education through professional roles in educator preparation, charter school innovation, grantmaking, and school improvement. Alan partners with educational communities to drive practical and meaningful outcomes for students of color and those experiencing poverty. His work building educational systems recognizes the hard reality that education systems are demonstrably unfair. Alan seeds intentional, transformational change efforts by building trusting relationships and placing those most connected to the outcomes at the center of decision-making.

Prior to launching Covariant Education where he is now Principal Consultant, Alan most recently served as a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he solicited, evaluated, selected, and awarded grants in the areas of networking for school improvement, COVID Recovery, and promotion of postsecondary pathways, aimed at improving college completion rates Black, Latino, and low-income students in America’s urban school districts. Dr. Coverstone previously served as Assistant Professor, Director of Graduate Programs, and Director of Innovation Projects in Education at Belmont University, where he established the Metro Nashville Urban Teacher Residency as a core component of his work in the Education Department. During his time at the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, he created the Innovation Zone, built the Aspiring Teachers program, created policy and supportive accountability structures to empower school leaders and connect with community, and served as Project Director for implementation of the district’s $12 million Magnet School Assistance Program (MSAP) grant. He previously served on the Davidson County school board.

A proponent of project-based learning and youth development of voice and agency, Dr. Coverstone serves on the Board of the National Speech and Debate Association, where he seeks to expand access to speech and debate opportunities to all students. In his work with educator preparation programs, he focuses on the lived experiences of students and scaffolding them accordingly so that students learn and educational systems thrive. While working to develop the Gates Foundation Networks for School Improvement, Alan supported continuous improvement leaders in their work with students and families, and fostered partnerships that called teachers and communities to inspect their own opinions and biases to meaningfully move the needle on systemic change.

Dr. Coverstone earned his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy at Vanderbilt’s Peabody School and was a teacher and debate coach for 14 years.