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Coaching takes many shapes and forms in districts across the country. It is used to advance a range of strategic priorities, from supporting teacher growth and implementing evidence-based instructional practices to building leadership capacity.

During the edLeader Panel “Coaching from the District to the Classroom: Ensuring Consistency, Transparency, and Impact,” two education leaders from Georgia districts discussed their coaching strategies that ensure every educator receives high-quality, individualized support that bolsters student achievement.

Coaching: Benefits and Challenges

Coaching drives quality instruction, improves student outcomes, propels continuous improvement, and assists in talent development. It also has its share of challenges; leaders must ensure a shared, districtwide coaching culture, organize centralized, curated coaching tools and resources, identify a district coaching leader, and provide access to coaching data insights.

There are 13 formalized steps district leaders can take to develop and implement a program that boosts instructional practice, drives positive student outcomes, and addresses challenges.

1. Set Goals

Focus on developing a coaching lens to establish and achieve a strategic vision. Define district- and school-level instructional priorities so coaching and data collection are purpose driven. Create conditions to advance student learning and outcomes, invest in staff development and improvement, allocate resources, and create a coaching culture.

2. Establish a Vision

Message common coaching cycles, language, and data sources with clear strategies for documenting best practices and strengthening the instructional culture. Ensure everyone understands the coaching vision and purpose, with clear parameters for student achievement.

3. Build a District-to-Classroom Coaching Framework

Design a robust coaching structure that defines what coaching looks like and standardizes how feedback is delivered across roles. Systematically map a through-line of responsibility, from the chief of schools to the classroom.

4. Adopt a Coaching Methodology

Put in place one coaching approach that works (e.g., See It/Name It/Do It). Train coaches and leaders to ensure language and rubrics are consistent, creating a shared framework for describing practice and feedback.

5. Provide Professional Development

Offer professional development to build capacity for leadership coaching and instructional coaching, as well as to support the selected coaching approach.

6. Assign One Coach

Ensure each teacher has a single coach who owns their action steps and progress. This reduces conflicting feedback and helps teachers rally behind a single set of action steps aligned with specific data points. Feedback should be consistent and tied to school improvement priorities.

7. Ground Coaching in Data and Coaching Cycles

Structure coaching cycles to provide feedback on targeted KPIs and to review the impact of coaching, with the goal of capacity building. Implement pre-conference tasks (review goals and data), classroom observations (collect artifacts and data points), post-conference (codify action steps), and follow-up observations, resulting in aggregated districtwide data.

8. Systematically Code Feedback

Streamline processes for codifying instructional and leadership feedback and action steps. Using tools (Level Data is one example) to track changes in teacher practice is more efficient than spreadsheets and emails. Enable customized systems that capture and analyze data, with monitoring at multiple organizational levels.

9. Monitor Continuous Improvement

Use the plan-do-study-act approach: Set goals, implement action steps, study progress and trends, and refine supports or professional development. Hold regular monitoring meetings to review progress and ensure alignment.

10. Diagnose Root Causes

Examine data from multiple angles to determine whether gaps are skill based, will based, or structural.

11. Use the Five Cs of Change Framework

Apply the framework to ensure coaching messaging and direction:

1. Clarity: Be explicit about and frequently revisit expectations.
2. Communication: Share progress via newsletters, leadership meetings, and board reports.
3. Collaboration: Give specialists access to coaching data to coordinate division supports.
4. Culture: Use coaching to build a growth mindset.
5. Commitment: Phase implementation and invest in training.

12. Leverage Technology

Use platforms to document and expedite work, but keep time for conversations, modeling, and reflection. Replace spreadsheets and emails with real-time observation notes, automated feedback, and dashboards to monitor coaching equity and frequency, increase coach visits, share benchmark and formative data, and boost transparency and accessibility.

13. Align Observations to School Priorities

Use shared rubrics and walkthrough checklists for purposeful and equitable feedback. Celebrate goal-aligned practices, offer concrete suggestions for deepening implementation, and link feedback to professional development. Help teachers connect daily practices to the collective vision, recognize coaching as cohesive rather than random, and sustain motivation.

How to Begin?

The panelists offered some essential tips for how to start this process. Start slow and be practical, and iterate along the way. Launch a workflow, using input and feedback from teachers and coaches to refine that workflow. Last, strengthen fidelity before fully expanding the program.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, Coaching from the District to the Classroom: Ensuring Consistency, Transparency, and Impact, sponsored by Level Data.

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Article by Michele Israel, based on this edLeader Panel