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This article was developed with contributions from SchoolWorks Leadership Coach, Nicole Sherrin Kessler.

Imagine for a moment that a school leadership meeting is underway. The most poignant information is on the table. The conversation stays focused on the priorities most likely to make a meaningful difference for students. Decisions are made with collaborative input, and action items are delegated. The meeting ends, and everyone leaves knowing exactly what happens next, and who is championing what for the week ahead. 

“Wow,” the team thinks. “What a great use of time.” 

This kind of feedback is one way a school leader can feel confident the team is unified and heading in the right direction. The leader knows they do not have to be everywhere at once. They feel connected enough to the work to confidently lead impactful weekly meetings. They do not have to do it all themselves.

Is this scenario a pie in the sky? It really does not have to be. Good structure, strong communication, and the right use of data can cultivate scenarios like the one described above. With some focused effort and teamwork, highly productive meetings in which data is central to decision-making can become part of the regular routine.

Come November, many school leaders feel burnt out, and perhaps they have come to expect this feeling. But what might be possible if principals, district leaders, and school leadership teams began building exit ramps from this seemingly unavoidable hamster wheel?

This article explores two key questions to meet leaders looking for that much-needed change:

1. How are you using the data you have already collected?
2. How are you leading and focusing the time with your team?
    

The best source for real change is data. It can help school leaders focus their time, sharpen their coaching, and point teams toward the actions most likely to improve student outcomes. 

 

Check Where the Compass is Pointing

Before gathering more data or adding another agenda item, take time to establish a clear direction for school improvement. Start by asking:

• Student Outcomes: What student outcomes are we working to improve this year?
• Schoolwide Priorities: What are the highest-leverage priorities that will help us achieve those outcomes?
• Actions: What specific practices or actions must our school team implement to advance those priorities?
• Leading Indicators: What evidence will tell us whether those actions are being implemented effectively and producing the progress we expect?

Clear synthesis of data gives your team a compass, so that your shared time is harnessing what matters most and specific goals are put into place. 

Leading indicators are especially important because they provide early insight into whether improvement efforts are on track. While student achievement data helps schools assess whether they have achieved their intended outcomes, leading indicators offer more immediate evidence about the practices, conditions, and behaviors that contribute to those results.

Depending on the school's priorities, leading indicators might include the quality of instructional coaching, fidelity of curriculum implementation, student attendance, or evidence of student engagement.

By identifying and regularly monitoring these indicators, school teams can recognize progress, identify implementation challenges, and make timely adjustments to their strategies.

The goal is not to collect more data, but to use the right evidence to keep improvement efforts focused, actionable, and responsive. 

 

Make Your Meetings Work for Everyone

Identifying priorities, actions, and leading indicators is an important first step. But meaningful improvement depends on how consistently school teams use that information to assess progress, address challenges, and adjust their approach.

This doesn't require adding more meetings to an already crowded calendar. Instead, it means making intentional use of existing meeting time to focus on the evidence, discussions, and decisions that will move school improvement efforts forward.

In his book, Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni offers a model built on a simple idea: different kinds of conversations deserve different kinds of meetings. He describes several types: a daily check-in, a weekly tactical meeting, a monthly strategic discussion, and a quarterly review. Michael Lorsch of The Table Group adopted this model and now consults with professional teams on it. He describes how this separation gives each conversation its own context. 

Consider the weekly tactical meeting. 
For school leadership teams, reviewing data is an essential part of the weekly tactical meeting. Regularly examining leading indicators allows teams to assess progress toward schoolwide priorities, identify emerging challenges, and determine where immediate adjustments or additional support are needed. 

These three habits can help keep weekly meetings focused and productive:

1. Keep the opening round fast. In the model's "lightning round," each person shares their top three priorities for the week in about 30 seconds. Anyone who wants to dig deeper adds the topic to the agenda instead of pausing the round.
2. Stay in the tactical lane. When a conversation turns toward long-term strategy, the team moves it to a "parking lot" for the monthly strategic meeting, where it can get the focused time and information it deserves.
3. Record decisions and commitments. Someone captures what the team members commit to, and the group reviews those commitments at the close and then again the top of the next weekly meeting.

For a school or district, this may not always be formal. It might look like a quick huddle to surface an urgent concern, a one-on-one with a teacher or instructional coach to work through an individual challenge, and a recurring leadership meeting to examine schoolwide trends, name barriers, and agree on next steps.

The format matters less than the intention: every meeting needs a clear purpose, and the information in the room should help to fulfil it.

Consider a leadership team that is reviewing progress-monitoring data showing students falling short of expected reading gains. Instead of simply noting the trend, the team can ask focused questions:

• What instruction are these students experiencing?
• What do classroom observations show?
• Where might teachers need more support?
• What can we adjust now, and how will we know if it’s working?

Reviewing data is only the starting point. Meaningful improvement happens when teams look beyond the data to examine the underlying systems and practices, recognize what’s working, and make informed adjustments to drive continued progress.

 

Turn Data Into Coaching and Action

But what does it actually look like to dig deeper into the systems and practices behind the data?

Data can help identify where improvement is needed, but understanding why requires conversation, observation, and purposeful inquiry. By engaging the educators closest to the work, school leaders can better understand the factors contributing to observed patterns, identify opportunities for targeted support, and determine the actions most likely to improve outcomes. 

Suppose data shows students struggling to master a particular skill. The focused questions the leadership team may explore in a data meeting could include:

• What are teachers noticing about student understanding?
• Which strategies have teachers tried, and what evidence suggests they’re working?
• What resources, collaboration, or coaching would be helpful?

Questions like these help teachers find solutions, strengthen their practice, and own the next steps while also building leadership capacity within the team.

The same approach works for leadership teams. When a challenge is shared across classrooms or grade levels, widen the lens from individual performance to the systems underneath it: 

• Do teachers have the time, materials, and professional learning they need? 
• Are expectations clear? 
• Are loops getting closed?
• Who owns the next step? 
• When will the team look at the data again? 
• What evidence will show whether the action worked?

Lorsch describes how his own leadership team handled this during meetings. One person recorded every assigned commitment, and the group reviewed the list at the start of the next weekly meeting. In his experience, it took just a couple of check-ins before people regularly showed success or progress around their task. 

 

Commit to a Rhythm for Reflection and Response

Effective progress monitoring is an ongoing, fluid exercise. It has a rhythm: review the evidence, surface the story, make decisions, then return to the data regularly to see what happened. 

If you have not quite established this rhythm at your school, here are two steps for getting started:

1. Revisit your priorities. Make sure your team’s annual priorities are clearly aligned to the outcomes you are looking to support.
2. Choose leading indicators that connect to your priorities. Be selective; a small set of meaningful indicators serves you better than a long list of data points.
3. Decide when and how your team will use the evidence. Build time into existing meetings to review progress, make meaning of that progress, determine next steps, and revisit prior commitments with clear owners and a date to check impact.

Over time, data informs conversations, conversations shape action, and progress guides what comes next. It also gives leaders permission to step back and see the patterns connecting the challenges in a given day.

 

Better Use of Time >> Better Support >> Better Outcomes.

School leaders can’t, and shouldn’t, solve every problem alone. When leaders use data with purpose and protect space for meaningful conversation, they can see where their attention matters most, coach fellow educators toward solutions that fit, and strengthen the systems that support teaching and learning. Because no principal can be everywhere at once, investing in sustainable routines will keep leaders connected to the work, and keep the work moving even when they are not in the room.

The path forward is simply making the time leaders already invest in their teams count for more. The result is a more focused kind of leadership, one that turns data into direction, collaboration into action, and purposeful use of time into progress for students. Incidentally, it will also cultivate leadership among the educators on your team.


This article was developed with contributions from SchoolWorks Leadership Coach, Nicole Sherrin Kessler.

 

Here at SchoolWorks, we help schools and districts build systems where improvement is not a one-time initiative, but an ongoing cycle of learning, reflection, and growth. If you are looking to learn more about SchoolWorks’ Improvement Supports including school improvement planning, prioritization, improvement plan monitoring, and leadership coaching; reach out to us anytime at hello@schoolworks.org.