Data Doesn't Improve Instruction-Leaders Do: How Strong Leadership Transforms Outcomes
Data is only information. Transformation happens when leaders create clarity, alignment, accountability, support, and instructional focus. This episode challenges the overreliance on data dashboards while emphasizing the power of leadership in driving student outcomes.
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Welcome to The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment, the podcast where we discuss leadership, culture, instruction, and the systems that create meaningful learning experiences for students and educators alike. I am your host, Dr. Lashanta, known as that Classy Sassy Consultant, and today we're talking about something schools discuss constantly: data. But data by itself has never improved instruction. Leaders do. Strong leadership is what transforms information into action, vision into systems, and expectations into results.
So let's talk about it. There is this obsession in education with data. And I'm not telling you that there's anything wrong with collecting data because that's how we know whether or not our students are making improvements, if they are measuring them at the mark, or if they need to have more guidance and more interventions in place in order to help them to be successful in whatever content that they're working in. So there's nothing wrong with data. Schools are drowning in numbers, though. They're drowning in numbers, but they're also starving for leadership clarity.
What is leadership clarity? As a leader, your ability to communicate transparently, inspiring hope, and maintaining a sense of direction is the foundation of clarity for your organization or for your school or for your school district. So schools may have all these numbers plastered all over the data room and on the walls in their schools and in their buildings. But unless there's some type of clarity, those numbers mean nothing to the teachers and to the staff members who work there. Data walls, spreadsheets, dashboards, benchmark reports, all of these are sources of data that are used in schools.
But again, you can have the spreadsheet, but not understand what the numbers mean, not understand whether or not a student has made growth. So why do some schools collect endless data but they see little growth? These are some of the things that we're going to talk about. But schools that collect data and see little growth, they're dealing with a leader issue.
There is danger in confusing, as a leader, if you confuse monitoring with leading, monitoring data, making sure that you are staying on task or making sure that your numbers don't change here and there. That doesn't define leadership. That's not leading, that's monitoring. And so there's a danger in confusing that. One thing that we talk about and that we need to acknowledge is that data identifies problems. But the leadership is what solves those problems. So keep in mind that data can reveal the problem, but leadership determines the response.
So I want you to think about this question. Have we become so focused on measuring instruction that we've forgotten how to lead it? That is a question that I want you to keep in mind as we continue in this episode of The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment.
So, what do strong leaders actually do? There are four leadership behaviors that transform outcomes. Those behaviors are creating clarity, building capacity, creating accountability, and protecting the mission. So leaders who create clarity, they are making sure that they have clear instructional expectations. What is it that the lessons should encompass? What does it look like, sound like when you walk into a classroom? Leaders are very specific about instructional expectations. If your district uses success criteria and learning intentions or whatever other terminology that may look at what is the objective of a lesson, whatever your district uses, making sure that as that instructional leader in that building, you are clear about your expectations of how these elements are going to be used by the classroom teachers to help guide instruction.
Leaders who create clarity also show alignment between their vision and practice. Whatever that vision is for the school, for the school district, because as a school, you want to be in line with the vision of the school district as well, making sure that there's alignment between that vision and what's actually being practiced in that school or in that school district for those superintendents who are listening. And then leader clarity, leadership is leadership clarity is created when everyone understands what quality instruction looks like.
And we just talked about that. What it looks like, what it sounds like when you walk into that classroom. The second behavior is building capacity. So what does this look like? Leaders who are able to coach over just having someone to check off a checklist saying, Oh, I've got my success criteria on the board or I have it within my lesson plan. Just checking off a block box to say I have it, versus seeing this in action. So as a leader, you want to coach and make sure that your teachers understand how to use anything that's been given to them, those instructional expectations, being clear about how you want the teachers to use different instructional strategies.
You want to coach them to greatness. You want to coach them up so that they know exactly what it is that they're expected to do. Instead of just having something that's slapped up against the wall or slapped into a lesson plan that makes absolutely no sense in the lesson. So coaching over compliance, there is a difference. This is one way to build capacity is to coach versus just wanting someone to be compliant and check off a box. Professional learning. As leaders, we need to make sure that professional learning is tied to the actual needs in that school or in that school district.
Just having professional learning opportunities to say, oh, we have a professional learning day, or every Monday or every Wednesday, we're going to meet in our learning communities and we're going to have professional learning. If it's not tied to the needs in that building, the needs for those teachers, whether it's the teachers on that team, whether it's the teachers in a content area, if the professional learning is not tied to and aligned with the actual needs, then you're not building capacity.
So make sure that it is tied in. And then modeling support systems. Modeling what it is that you want to see happen within your building. The support systems that are in place. If you expect your teachers to be compassionate, if you expect your teachers to know and understand their students, then the same should be modeled by you as well. That's what builds capacity. Know your staff, know your teachers. Another leadership behavior is creating accountability. As leaders, we must create accountability.
So accountability with support, not fear. And that support looks like coaching, looks like having reflective conversations, not trying to instill fear in your teachers. Because that goes back to you only want compliance. So as a leader, you want to create accountability by providing support. Following through consistently, this is an important piece. Anything that you're doing with your teachers, make sure that you're consistent. Any programs that you are bringing in. I did an episode about restorative practices and talking about how that's not just a program, it's a mindset.
And so you want to make sure that when you bring programs in, in order to help improve the instruction in your building and to improve culture, that you are following through consistently of what you expect to see around that building. So consistency is an important leadership behavior. And then the final one is protecting the mission. You don't want to get into a situation where you have so many initiatives in place that you can't keep up with whether you're coming or going when it involves those initiatives.
So prevent initiative overload. Don't have so many initiatives in place that you're not able to keep up, or you have so many in place you don't know which ones are actually improving and helping students to have growth, or if it's helping at all. So prevent initiative overload. Focus on staff on high impact priorities. Focus staff on high impact priorities. So the areas in which you feel need to be targeted, make sure your staff understand that this is what we are going to target now. This is our priority area.
And then keep student, keep instruction student-centered. No matter what your teachers may think, student-centered instruction is the way. Student-centered instruction helps the student to be better. And it also helps the teachers to be better. So make sure that it's not the teacher who is on the forefront and is doing all the talking in the classroom. As a leader, you have to make sure you protect the mission by keeping instruction students centered. Because if teachers are the ones who are at the forefront and they're doing 80% of the talking in the class, then what do they know about their students?
Do they know that the students have learned the information?
Keep in mind that teachers cannot hit a target they cannot see. So make sure there is clarity in your mission and as you build capacity. So, what's the difference between a data culture and a learning culture? A few key points to point out. In a data culture, you see where leaders are focused on the scores. Scores, scores, scores. This is what's important. We've got to move from this from point A to point B in order to get where we want to be, in order to come off of that list.
But in a learning culture, you focus on the growth.
Every student, and if you focus on growth and every student making improvement, then you're going to do well. The data will speak for itself. But focusing on a score or a letter, a letter grade, that is not going to create growth. Focusing it on growth is going to create growth. A data culture is reactive. If you see where your scores are not where they want to be, you begin to try to make changes and you're reactionary instead of being reflective. When you're in a learning culture, you are reflective.
That may look like sitting around the table with all of the all of the teachers, or sitting around the table with those individuals who teach those courses in which you have those high-stakes testing that's going on. But you sit down with them and you get their insight as to what they feel may have happened as far as why scores may not have looked a certain way and why one grade level did better than another. But it's reflective. A learning culture that is reflective, you look at, you're not just looking at the scores and making a jump decision as to what should happen next, but you're being reflective and thinking about and analyzing why the data looks the way that it does.
In a data culture, you are more compliance driven. Compliance sometimes is not the way to go. And it's not to say that you don't want people who are following directives and are following your expectations and following the vision. But a learning culture that is purpose-driven, when people know what the purpose is, when they know what the vision is, then they will follow. You don't just want people who are following, um, following you and following your directives, and they're reluctant. They're just doing it just because, because you're not going to get the best instruction going on in those classrooms when it's compliance driven.
You want your teachers to be purpose-driven.
In a data culture, you have fear-based conversations that happen. You're talking about people losing their jobs if their scores don't come up, or you're talking about having extra students in the classroom because they may have to take over another content area. You begin to instill fear into your teachers. That's a data culture, but in a learning culture, you have improvement-centered conversations. You're talking about how can we help our students to be better? But as a leader, you don't want to set yourself up to be a bully.
And bullies try to instill fear. Bullying your teachers will not help you to have the change that needs to take place in your schools. And then lastly, when you're looking at a data culture, blaming the teachers.
In education, we work and should be working collectively. So if scores are not up to par, even though the classroom teacher is the one in that class providing the instruction, we cannot blame the teachers if the scores are not where they need to be. There are a lot of factors that take place as to why students score the way they do. And we know that sometimes students do not always give their 100% best when they're being assessed. Some have testing anxiety. Some didn't learn the material because they may have been out due to medical reasons.
So when you begin to blame teachers for the scores of the students, you're creating an environment, you're creating a culture that it is not conducive to improvement. But in a learning culture, when you are supporting the development of that teacher, and you're wanting to help that teacher to be successful by providing outside trainers to come in or outside consultants to come in to provide engaging professional learning that is effective to helping that teacher grow, that's the learning culture.
And so when you're looking at data culture versus learning culture, there's there is more psychological safety in a learning culture because teachers feel that the leadership, that leaders are invested in them and that they're not out to get them. Teachers grow in environments where leaders coach and they don't just intimidate. So again, as a leader, you don't want to be a bully. Strong leaders normalize reflection and continuous improvement. So we want to keep in mind that instruction improves when people feel supported enough to grow.
When people feel supported, then they will improve and they will show growth as they continue to educate our students.
So when we're looking at practical leadership shifts, some things that you want to say when you're having your data meetings, you want to have data meetings that are actually action meetings. So data meetings, you're focusing on the score, but keeping in mind on learning culture, we are focusing on other aspects. And so we're gonna call these action meetings. So in our action meetings, instead of asking what do the scores say, you want to ask these questions. So you might want to get a pen and pen pen and paper to write these down.
So you want to ask the question: what instructional practices cause these results? What support do teachers need? What patterns are we seeing? What are students struggling to understand? And then how do we respond immediately?
What are the actionable strategies that we can begin to utilize once we've asked these questions and we've asked these questions and we want to find out the answers? What are the strategies? What are the actionable strategies that we need to do? As leaders, we need to conduct instructional walkthroughs and making sure we provide feedback. Walkthroughs are important, but they're not important if you don't give that feedback. Because then that walkthrough becomes, guess what? Another piece of data.
Make sure that you provide feedback to teachers to let them know what they did well, what are some areas they need to improve in. So providing feedback, use learning intentions and success criteria. This has become a love language for me. In my district, we use learning and tech intentions and success criteria, and it has opened up a world of understanding for teachers versus using objectives. And it's not to say that objectives, if you're still doing objectives, I do I do challenge you to learn more about learning intentions and success criteria.
Do your own research as well when you're looking at using learning. Intentions and success criteria. Then you also want to create collaborative planning sessions. And again, not sessions that are you sitting around looking at scores, but you are planning what you're going, what strategies do you want to focus on that are going to help the teachers? And the planning session is not just involving leadership. This should be a planning session in which you're working in teams, whether it's as grade levels, as content levels.
You want to make sure that you work in teams to begin to plan of how instruction and what instruction is going to look like in your building. And then celebrate instructional growth. You don't want to just celebrate whether or not students are proficient on an assessment, but celebrate growth. Because anytime your students can show improvement, you want to make sure that they know that you have seen them. You see that they are trying. You see that they have taken steps to be better. So make sure you celebrate instructional growth, not only with your teachers, but also with the students.
Data should start conversations, but data should not end the conversations.
So some leadership reflection, some questions that I want you to think about. As you think about some of the concepts that we've talked about today and talking about moving from a data-driven environment to a learning-centered environment, these are some questions that I want you to think about. Are we leading instruction or are we simply reporting data? Have we created alignment across our school or district? Do teachers leave meetings with clarity or with confusion? And are we building systems or just collecting numbers?
So this is my challenge to leadership today. This is my challenge to you. This week, I want you instead of asking your staff for more data, ask them what support they need to improve student learning. That is your challenge. Instead of asking your staff for more data, ask them what support they need to improve student learning.
Data matters, assessment matters, and accountability matters. But none of these things replace leadership. Strong leaders create the conditions where instruction improves, teachers grow, and students succeed. The schools that transform outcomes are not simply the schools with the best data systems, they are the school leaders, they are the schools with leaders who know how to turn information into action. So remember, data doesn't improve instruction, leaders do. Thank you for listening to The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment.
And if this episode challenged or encouraged you, share it with a school leader, instructional coach, or an educator who needs this conversation. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and connect with me through Lee Jay's Consulting LLC for leadership development, consulting, coaching, and professional learning opportunities.
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