Coaching for school leaders
Coaching gives school leaders a disciplined way to work through consequential questions about students, learning, and the school’s response. Conversations bring together learning evidence, professional judgment, the school’s knowledge of its students, and experience in assessment, learning differences, curriculum, instruction, and student support.
David Stevens works directly with leaders on questions arising from their own students and circumstances. A conversation may begin with one student and lead to a wider question about curriculum, intervention, admissions, assessment, faculty practice, or how the school communicates what it is learning.
Working through a question together
A working conversation begins with the question your team is trying to answer and what you already know. We examine the relevant learning evidence alongside classroom observations, student work, previous responses, and what students and families have shared.
Together, we distinguish what the evidence supports from what remains uncertain. We consider plausible explanations, identify what further evidence would help, and determine which response is proportionate to what the school currently understands.
Your curriculum, resources, and professional judgment shape the decision. When a response is put into practice, we identify what the school should look for next and when to return to the question. The work continues by examining whether the student’s learning, experience, or independence changed in the way the team expected.
Questions school leaders bring to coaching
These examples come from conversations with schools. Schools and students are unnamed.
Reviewing unexpected results
A curriculum coordinator brought a decline in ELA results across two grades. The discussion examined assessment timing and language used in questions, including a difference between the wording of an item and the terminology familiar to students.
In the same review, low geometry results concerned content the school had not yet taught. Those results subsequently rose after the content had been taught. The review considered assessment conditions and opportunities to learn when interpreting the findings.
Considering an applicant in the school’s context
An admissions team examined applicants’ results alongside those of its enrolled students. The conversation began with the current cohort and where the student support director would want a closer understanding of an applicant’s needs.
For an applicant near that point, the assessment supplied no finding that would override a favorable school visit and transcript. The evidence informed the team’s wider judgment about the student and the school’s ability to serve them.
Preparing for a board conversation
A head of school wanted to explain how students were doing. School-wide ELA and math results were strong, and the review also examined individual progress across a wide range of learning profiles.
Students receiving substantial support were among those making stronger progress. The conversation gave attention to both the school-wide picture and the progress of individual students, including those whose needs required considerable attention.
Coaching within the Student Success System
During first-year Visibility implementation, coaching helps leaders deepen their understanding of students and connect that understanding with decisions about teaching, challenge, intervention, and review.
A coaching question may reveal that the issue sits primarily in Visibility, or it may point toward another driver. A recurring student difficulty may raise a Focused Curriculum question. A pattern in classroom responses may become an Instruction question. Conflicting evidence may call for Meaningful Data. Good decisions that repeatedly fail to carry forward may expose a Workflow problem.
All five drivers are included in the annual Student Success System subscription. As the school’s work develops, coaching and guidance can follow questions across the system.
David Stevens, Ed.D.
David founded True Progress and developed its assessments. He brings thirty-five years of experience in independent K–12 education and doctoral training at Harvard with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Howard Gardner.
His work combines experience in assessment design, learning differences, student support, and independent-school education with the ability to work through ambiguous learning questions with school leaders. The aim is not to replace the judgment of the school, but to sharpen the reasoning behind the next decision and the evidence used to review it.
Discuss coaching for your school
Bring a question your school is trying to resolve.
It may concern a student whose difficulties persist despite support, a learner whose strengths and needs do not fit neatly together, an intervention whose impact is unclear, an assessment pattern that is difficult to explain, or a decision your leadership team needs to make with greater confidence.
We can examine what your team already knows, what remains uncertain, and whether coaching would help strengthen the reasoning and next steps.