Stronger Consulting is a leading provider of academic services that specializes in helping educational institutions achieve their goals. One of our clients, a large charter management organization in the southwest with over 15,000 students from diverse communities, approached us with a challenge: improve the quality of teacher coaching across the system. The network sought to elevate school accountability ratings in preparation for expansion into new states and new markets.
Project Launch
Our collective goal was to ensure a consistent quality of teaching and learning across schools. The project was launched in the winter of 2020 with a focus on providing targeted support to underperforming schools and offering a suite of instructional coaching trainings to leaders across the network. Together, we developed a longer term plan to more systematically clarify the instructional vision and improve the quality of instructional coaching across all schools.
1st Year of Targeted Support
The first year of the project was focused on providing targeted support to underperforming schools and offering a suite of instructional coaching trainings to leaders across the network. Our team of experts worked closely with the school leaders to understand their specific needs and challenges. The Academic Services Team provided personalized coaching and training sessions to help them learn and apply effective instructional coaching frameworks. Our training is designed to develop a shared vision of excellence, consider the context in which it will be applied, and practice and apply learning right away.
2nd Year of Strategic Training and Expanded Support
In the second year of the project, our focus shifted to a larger effort to strengthen instructional leadership capacity across the organization. We developed a cohort model to train instructional leadership teams and expanded our individualized coaching of instructional coaches. We worked with the network team to develop a blueprint for new school launch and an emerging leaders program. Our goal was to help the team systematize their approach to teacher coaching and development in order to improve student outcomes and achieve consistently high accountability ratings.
Conclusion
The project is still under way, but under performing schools have improved on the accountability metrics and the organization is poised to expand into two new states in the coming year. Leaders have provided overwhelmingly positive feedback on our training and support, and we have seen ongoing improvements in leader implementation of the instructional coaching frameworks, teacher proficiency with priority instructional skills, and student academic outcomes. Stronger Consulting is proud to have been a part of this success and looks forward to continuing to work with the organization in the future.
