Elevating principals, teachers, and students through shared purpose and leadership

Key points:

• Strong coaching and professional development can accelerate achievement
• Advancing digital equity through teacher leadership
• A look at one school’s innovative approach to PD
• For more news on professional development, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub

In Charleston County, South Carolina, a school turnaround initiative designed to enhance teaching and learning at 10 schools on the state’s improvement list has seen remarkable success.

Our 80-school district, which serves 50,000 students across 1,000 square miles, is committed to college, career, and citizenship readiness for every child. However, in 2019, nearly half our students scored below proficiency in math and reading as measured by state test scores. To close achievement gaps that have disproportionately affected our students of color, we knew we needed to improve instruction and the quality of our curriculum materials.

In fall 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we embarked on an initiative we called Mission Critical, designed to improve the very lowest-performing schools in the district. We standardized our use of instructional materials and implemented math and literacy coaches at every school. We also teamed up with Leading Educators, a nonprofit organization that supports high-quality instruction, to transform professional learning for our teachers.

As a result of our efforts, nine of the 10 turnaround schools we were supporting with this initiative have been taken off the state’s list of Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools–and the tenth school has also shown tremendous growth and is just two points away from removal.

All nine of the schools removed from the state’s improvement list were rated average, good, or excellent on student progress in 2024. Their growth has outpaced that of other schools in our district, even during the pandemic–at a time when schools nationwide were backsliding.

How have we managed to make such significant progress in a relatively short amount of time? By focusing our efforts on a narrowly-defined and clearly-articulated plan to improve teaching and learning … and by securing buy-in from teachers and principals at the schools in question.

This sense of purpose around a shared strategic goal has elevated our principals, teachers, and students alike. Our teacher retention rates have improved, students are engaged in learning, and lessons are more active and collaborative, with students leading much of the discussion in class.

Here are three key lessons we’ve learned throughout this process.

Simplify, refine, focus

School systems often try to juggle multiple initiatives at once. This results in too many balls in the air for principals and teachers to handle, making it hard to complete all of this school improvement work simultaneously.

Focusing on one or two initiatives at a time and putting all your resources behind those efforts improves the chances of success. In Charleston County, we have been highly strategic in what we tried to accomplish and where we directed our time and attention. We chose to focus on improving the quality of instruction by adopting a single, high-quality math and reading program for each grade level and training our teachers in high-impact instructional strategies.

Before our Mission Critical initiative began, our schools were using several different instructional programs. There was no uniformity across the district, and teachers were spending the majority of their planning time searching for lessons and activities they could do with their students.

To make things easier for our teachers and bring uniformity to instruction, we decided to standardize on a single program for math and reading within our 10 Acceleration Schools. We chose EL Education for English language arts, Bridges for preK-5 math, and Illustrative Mathematics for math in grades 6-8. Both of these math programs focus on problem-solving and skills-building in a rigorous but accessible manner, with a blend of direct instruction, structured investigation, and open exploration.

We also refined our use of professional learning communities (PLCs) from a hodgepodge of various groups to weekly PLCs for math and ELA development. Additionally, we tightened our professional learning activities by focusing on just a few key objectives each year, such as explicitly stating the learning goals for each lesson and asking students high-quality questions.

When you focus on just a few things and do those well, then you can build upon those skills the following year. We spent a full year working with teachers on not just posting each lesson’s objectives but making sure the objectives were unpacked and understood by teachers. Now, when you walk into each classroom, teachers are referencing objectives and underscoring standards, calling out the important verbs in kid-friendly language so that students clearly understand what is expected of them. In doing so, teachers are ensuring the student experience is aligned with the goals of the lesson, creating a much more holistic and impactful learning experience.

In doing this work, we learned a valuable lesson: You can’t eat the whole apple in just one bite. Because our teachers were able to focus on only a handful of specific initiatives each year, we’ve noticed substantial growth in their skills.

Improve professional learning and coaching

Improving the quality of instruction that students receive begins with ensuring that teachers are well-skilled and prepared.

Teachers must not only know the grade-level content they’re teaching and the standards they’re helping students meet inside and out; they also must know how to implement the curriculum materials we’ve chosen, use data to differentiate instruction for each child, and engage students in deeper learning strategies. One way teachers learn these skills is through the guidance and support of instructional coaches.

Before our Mission Critical initiative began, we had just one instructional coach for the entire district, and we didn’t have any structure in place for how this coaching should operate or what kinds of support the district would provide.

However, South Carolina offers a literacy coach for each school on its CSI list. We also decided to pay for a math coach in each of our Acceleration Schools using Title I money. We worked with Leading Educators to train and support our new instructional coaches, helping these individuals understand how to deliver effective coaching.

We also leveraged the organization’s expertise as we rolled out our new curriculum programs within these schools. We knew that if we were going to be successful, our teachers would have to have a deep understanding of the materials and how to teach with them. As a result, we held professional learning sessions with our teachers, principals, and instructional coaches throughout the year to ensure that everybody knew the instructional practices we expected.

The training was organized by Leading Educators. The team immediately immersed itself in our community, partnering with the district instructional specialist, who was also instrumental in our school coaches’ success. For each session, we focused on just one or two domains within our classroom observation rubric that explained what we wanted to see from instruction. We did a deep dive into these practices with coaches, principals, and APs to ensure alignment throughout the school leadership team, with the trainers demonstrating what effective teaching should look like.

But we didn’t stop there. We also followed up a few weeks later to examine teachers’ practices and go over feedback about their experience.

This process was incredibly valuable. Our teachers knew the professional development they were getting wasn’t just a one-off experience. Instead, we were building on the skills they had learned before.

You might think teachers would be reluctant to attend professional learning sessions, but we always had our teachers from every school present. They saw the value in what they were learning, and they realized they would be guided and supported in implementing these practices in their classrooms.

I have been in education for many years, but I can honestly say this was the first time I saw the relevance of high-quality professional development sessions and how the follow-through process of supporting teachers transferred into the classroom. We talk about the importance of engaging and meaningful professional learning, but how often do we actually see it in practice? These sessions helped us understand what high-quality, district-level support really looks like.

Focus on the “why”

Another lesson we learned was the importance of communicating the reasoning behind everything we were doing. To get principals and teachers to buy in and change their practices when they already have so much on their plates, district leaders must explain in compelling terms why this work is necessary.

Before we began this work, we framed our Mission Critical initiative in terms of equity, emphasizing that all students deserve high-quality instruction. We explained how these efforts would help us deliver on this promise, and we continued to drive home this message to our principals, teachers, and instructional coaches throughout the process.

Our principals took part in professional learning alongside our teachers. Principals are the instructional leaders in their buildings, and we wanted to ensure they knew what instructional practices we expected of our teachers so they could look for those practices in walkthroughs.

Getting principals to buy in and trust that we knew what we were doing required a lot of relationship-building. Remember, we started this initiative during COVID, when they already had a lot on their minds. They were trying to manage a combination of virtual and in-person instruction during a highly stressful period.

Our partnership with Leading Educators alleviated some of the responsibilities they had to worry about, like how to develop instructional coaches and design effective professional learning. By participating with their staff, they could focus on becoming learners themselves. Hearing proven examples of instructional practices that have worked in other districts, communicated by experienced professionals, helped secure principals’ buy-in as well.

Dramatic improvement

From January through May 2021, we worked with our instructional leaders and groups of teachers to help them understand the new curricula. We then rolled out these materials in our Acceleration Schools for the 2021-22 school year. Because we were deliberate in our approach, we had a very successful rollout, and we hope to pattern our future curriculum implementations after this experience.

One indicator that our approach to professional learning has been successful is that we’ve seen this learning “stick.” We just did a series of unscheduled walkthroughs in our Acceleration Schools, and the difference between what I saw when I first arrived in the district and what I see now is remarkable.

For instance, teachers’ questioning was on point. Our teachers are asking good questions to help students show what they’ve learned, explore the subject matter comprehensively, generate discussion, foster critical thinking skills, and encourage students to take their learning deeper. We worked on this a lot, and seeing that teachers are still doing this well was very gratifying.

Our teachers now know how to examine their practices within PLCs. Our instructional coaches are recording teachers and giving them constructive feedback. And it’s not something we have to monitor: It’s just happening because it’s part of the work that has become embedded in our culture during the last few years.

We’ve seen dramatic student improvement. Scores have gone up, and we have data showing a decline in the number of low-performing Black males in particular. Our Acceleration Schools have experienced significant improvement in math and ELA state test results from 2021 to 2023, despite national declines in achievement during the pandemic.

Not only student achievement, but also teacher retention has improved. When we first started this work, we were seeing schools let teachers go because of poor performance and educators leave because they weren’t happy. This year, we didn’t have to hire a single new teacher in at least two schools. Our teachers are more satisfied now because they feel supported. They know we’re investing in making them better.

We often hear examples of what’s wrong in education, but our school turnaround initiative in Charleston County is an example of success. By narrowing our focus and investing in strong coaching and professional learning, we’re accelerating achievement in what had been our lowest-performing schools–and we’re getting results.