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Many school systems measure success in math education by one thing: math test scores. But what if waiting for scores to improve is actually slowing down meaningful change?

Math test scores are often treated as proof that math professional development, initiatives, or instructional changes are working. But the reality is, they’re lagging indicators—they tell us what already happened, not what’s happening right now. When math leaders focus only on math test scores and outcomes, they risk missing the daily classroom experiences that actually produce those outcomes. Sustainable improvement doesn’t come from chasing math test scores. It comes from redesigning the systems, structures, and instructional experiences that shape student learning every day.

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• Why math test scores are lagging indicators in math improvement
• The difference between activity and actual impact
• What math leaders should measure instead of waiting for outcomes
• How classroom experiences shape long-term achievement
• Why systems—not individuals—drive results
• What it means to “change the change” in math education

If you’re feeling pressure to prove improvement through math test scores alone, this episode will help you rethink what meaningful progress actually looks like—and how to build systems that create lasting change.

Attention District Math Leaders:

K-12 Math Leaders: Download our free Math Coherence Compass to help your teammates, system leaders, and educators create aligned instructional practices—without adding another initiative. https://makemathmoments.com/compass/

Not sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/

Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com 

Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Let me start with something that might sting a little. If you’re waiting for test scores to prove your system, the efforts that you’re making in professional development is working, you’re still thinking inside the box. That’s it. That’s right. I said that because here’s the truth. Most leaders like us and leaders that we work for and that we report to, they don’t want to hear this fact.

Your system is perfectly designed to get you the results you’re getting. So if scores aren’t where you want them, it’s not a data problem. It’s not a teacher problem. It’s not a student problem. It’s a system problem. And if that’s true, then chasing test scores as proof, that’s not leadership. That’s confirmation bias. So let’s talk about what’s really happening here.

I’ve been hearing a lot of this lately from the district leaders that I talk to on a regular basis every day. Meet with leaders from all across North America and guide them on some, some moves. First time I’m meeting them. Sometimes I’ve met with them repeatedly over the year, but what we’re hearing is when we first have this conversation, people wanted to say, I need those scores to go up. We gotta, we gotta prove that this works. We need to see achievement data, you know, be improved. It needs to go up and on the surface.

That sounds right. And long-term, I would tend to agree. We all want achievement data to go up. And that’s assuming that the assessments that we’re using for achievement data is accurately measuring the things that we want them to measure. But let’s unpack this. Because when you say, show me the scores, or I want those scores to increase, what you’re really saying is I only believe in change after the outcome appears. And that’s the trap. Test scores are

lagging indicators. They are the last thing to change. They tell you what happened and not why it happened. And that’s part of the system thinking that we need to think about. It’s like checking the weather six months after the storm. Is it useful? Maybe. Actionable? Not even close. And yet we build entire improvement plans around waiting for that moment, waiting and crossing our fingers that the data changes.

We implement PD, we roll out strategies, we push initiatives, then we wait. We wait months. Sometimes we wait a full year and we just hope the number validates those decisions we made through the year. And when they don’t, when they’re flat or when they’re stagnant or we just can’t tell because the data is murky, we pivot, we replace, we restart. Does this sound familiar?

This is inside the box thinking. And here’s the deeper issue. When we rely on test scores as our primary measure, we’re playing inside this closed loop. It’s a system that says, we’ll know if it worked after it’s too late to adjust it. And that’s not improvement, that’s gambling. And even worse, it leads to what we see everywhere, which is a spaghetti at the wall approach to leadership in mathematics. Try this, try that, add another initiative, layer on another strategy, because we don’t know

what actually is working. We’re measuring the wrong things. So we try everything. We call it progress. But it’s not progress, it’s activity. And activity is not the same as impact. We gotta change the change. So what does that really mean, change the change? It means you stop chasing outcomes and you start redesigning the system that produces them. Because again, your system is perfectly designed to get you the results you’re getting.

If teachers aren’t implementing, that’s the system. If instruction is inconsistent, it’s a system. If students aren’t experiencing deep mathematical thinking, that’s the system. And here’s the hard part. You don’t fix system problems with more effort. People are doing a meant having immense effort. You fix, you fix a system problem with different design. Leaders who actually create change, they don’t wait for the test scores. They don’t even start there. They ask different questions.

They ask, what do we want our classrooms to look like five years from now? What should change now to make that happen? What should students be doing, saying, thinking? What teacher moves would show this visible every, uh, in a visible way every day. And most importantly, we have to ask, how will we know what’s happening? Not then, but now this week, next month, not next year, because real improvement systems don’t rely on the delayed data. They rely on leading indicators, things like.

The amount of discourse you’re seeing in our classrooms, use of representations amongst student interactions and with teachers in their lesson design and what they’re doing in their classrooms every day. Evidence of reasoning, what do the exit tickets look like? What do they sound like? How are we using those in our assessments? Teacher’s decision making in the moment, that’s where change actually lives. This is the shift.

Did scores go up? We have to shift from that to is this experience changing? What should it look like? Because when the experience changes, the outcomes follow. And when you chase outcomes first, you skip over that part you can actually control.

Why does this matter now? Well, let’s bring this back to what you’re likely experiencing. Pressure from superintendents, from boards, from communities, from fellow peers. Show us the results. And it’s tempting to play that game, to respond with just give us more time. But there’s a better move. You don’t defend the system. You reframe the conversation. You say, if you want different results, we need to change what’s happening every day in our classrooms. We have to change the support. We have to change…

with our professional development looks like. We have to change what our PLCs are doing on a regular basis. We have to change the ways distributive leadership is happening across mathematics. Test scores don’t improve systems. Systems improve test scores. So here’s the question I’ll leave you with today. Are you trying to prove your system works or are you building a system that can’t help but work? Because those are very different paths. One waits for validation and the other creates inevitability.

If this resonated with you today, if you’re feeling the tension between pressure and purpose, then you’re exactly where you need to be because the next step isn’t to work harder. It’s to change the change. And if you want a jumpstart on changing the change, we would encourage you to take our free training on creating a math coherence compass. If you open up your podcast platform right now and you scroll to this session, there’s a link there waiting for you to grab our free

template for the math coherence compass. There’s a video that attaches that start there. That’s how we change the change. Take care.

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