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January is an important—and often overlooked—moment in the school year. With state testing just months away, many leaders double down on interventions, tutoring, and Tier 2 supports.

“For some schools, and maybe this could be true districtwide as well, Tier 2 feels a little more controllable. It’s sort of like I have a smaller student group, I can control the scripted programs, I am able to create these interventions with these pods of students, as opposed to looking at the bigger Tier 1 core instruction,” said Leslie Johnson, Instructional Coach in the New York City Public Schools (NY).

No amount of intervention, though, can compensate for weak Tier 1 instruction. The edLeader Panel “How Leaders Can Maximize Impact Before State Testing” brought together education leaders and experts to explore how to reset, refocus, and elevate Tier 1 instruction.

Why We Need to Revisit the Status Quo

According to recent studies, when Tier 1 teaching is treated as the foundation, students spend far more time working on grade-level content—four to five hours a day, compared with just 30 to 45 minutes in intervention groups—making core instruction the biggest driver of student learning.

Strong Tier 1 classrooms also reduce the need to pull students into small groups, allowing more students to learn alongside peers and engage in meaningful academic discussion with students of all skill levels. “Another student offers another approach that just resonates with a student, or another idea, and we’re missing out on that if our intervention groups are really homogeneously grouped,” said Keri Hubbard, Chief of Program for the National Summer School Initiative (NSSI).

Instead, leaders have to truly believe grade-level work is intervention. “The research is very clear. Acceleration outperforms remediation because it prepares students for what’s coming next instead of keeping them in what they’ve missed,” said Lauren LaMont, Educational Consultant at Heart & Hustle Consulting.

How You Can Get Started on a Top-of-Year Reset

The good news: Tier 1 instruction is not set in stone—it can be improved.

According to the panelists, leaders must first see themselves as instructional leaders, prioritizing classroom quality and student safety above operational tasks. Then, they can save time by sharpening—not adding—work already underway, including:

• Narrowing instruction to the most important standards
• Strengthening daily checks for understanding
• Replacing stand-alone test prep with test-style questions embedded in lessons
• Investing in teacher learning through peer observation

“We want to make sure that when we’re going into classrooms, they understand that we’re on the same page with what those checks are. One thing we’re going to stop is isolated test prep. We’re going to make sure that there are integrated, embedded, test-based question stems within each of those lessons in our Tier 1 instruction,” said Johnson.

Rather than launching new initiatives, it is recommended to drop competing demands and recommit to what matters most. You can start with these three steps:

1. Find out where things stand now. Between January and testing season, spend less time gathering new data and more time diagnosing what’s happening in Tier 1 classrooms. A key benchmark: roughly 75-80% of students should be meeting daily learning targets.
2. Find consistency. Ensure lessons are being carried out as intended, with enough time for student practice and meaningful formative assessment. One school in District 17 in the New York City Public Schools implements a Danielson study team, where teachers are paired with peers across grades to observe how a particular skill or lesson is taught, ensuring pedagogy aligns with strong instructional practice and that consistency occurs throughout the building all year long. They consider strategic questions like: How are we lifting the level of student engagement? How are we making impactful moves in our lessons? How are we making sure that the delivery matches the angle?
3. Support teachers. Help educators—especially those new to the profession—identify which parts of the curriculum are essential while maintaining high expectations. It requires working as partners, not evaluators, and offering real-time coaching and feedback that strengthen instruction immediately and benefit the next group of students.

Above all, clear communication is critical, setting and reinforcing priorities to reduce compliance fatigue. Working alongside teachers rather than relying on mandates helps leaders best empower educators, protecting time for collaboration and follow-through.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, How Leaders Can Maximize Impact Before State Testing, sponsored by The National Summer School Initiative (NSSI).

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Article by Suzanne Bell, based on this edLeader Panel