Academic Support

Grade-Appropriate Assignments

Students learn at astonishingly similar rates due to the number of opportunities they have to learn (Koedinger et al., 2023). Therefore acceleration can best be understood as an increase in opportunities for students to learn grade-level content. Acceleration is the opposite of remediation. Where remediation requires below-level instruction until students are ready, acceleration provides at- or above-level content with sufficient support for students to succeed.

Strong Instruction

Principals must use intentional, focused strategies to lead teachers to accelerate the learning of all students. Principals guide teachers to probe student achievement data to determine progress toward achieving grade-level standards. Principals also guide teachers to use student data to personalize and adjust instructional strategies–in real-time, supporting lessons designed around grade-level content. Principals ensure teachers implement instructional strategies which create equitable and supportive learning opportunities for all students. Principals observe classrooms and coach teachers on scaffolding instruction. In so doing, principals become the instructional leaders needed to improve teacher practices and student academic outcomes even as the effects of the pandemic linger. 

Deep Engagement

Research consistently demonstrates that high-quality leaders can and do improve student learning outcomes (Gates et al., 2019; Branch et al., 2013; Marzano et al., 2005). Principals are also essential catalysts for effective school improvement (Leithwood et al., 2004). Studies show that with strong leadership from the principal, teachers become more effective and increase student achievement (Grissom et al., 2021). In a recent meta-analysis of 60 studies, Kraft and Blazar (2018) found that providing teachers with high-quality coaching and feedback raises the quality of teachers’ instructional practice and improves student achievement. However, principals often struggle to provide effective coaching and feedback. When principals focus coaching and feedback on the instructional practices, it increases the learning rate and depth to accelerate student progress toward grade-level standards. 

High Expectations

Catching up requires harder work from students (Willingham, 2009). Principals and teachers together establish a culture that rewards hard work. It is important to set high expectations, which include honesty on the part of all adults about what students must do to improve and what teachers must do to get them there. Teachers who provide equitable instruction communicate and align high expectations for all students while providing appropriate instruction and scaffolding as needed (Murray-Darden and Turner, 2023). To praise substandard performance is to lower expectations.