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We know principals are busy—constantly managing urgent issues and putting out fires. But we also know this: school-level change is the most powerful lever we have for improving student learning in math. So the real question is: are we setting school leaders up for math success?

In this episode, we help schools and districts reflect on their current systems and support structures using a simple leadership audit:

• How are we positioning principals to take ownership of instructional leadership in math?

• Are they aligned to the school’s math goals?

• What’s getting in the way—and how can we fix it?

You’ll hear about common barriers schools face and gain actionable ideas from our work in math across North America to overcome them. If we want meaningful math improvement, engaging principals is not optional—it’s essential.

Key Takeaways:

• Why principals are essential for leading instructional change in math

• How to identify and remove barriers that limit principal involvement

• What it looks like when district and school leadership are aligned on math goals

• Questions to help you audit your current leadership structures for math

• Strategies to build principal ownership and capacity in math instruction

Attention District Math Leaders:

Take the Math Improvement Framework Assessment For Leadership & get your own downloadable copy.

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

Jon Orr: In this episode, we’re going to be unpacking a a very important component of building math improvement plans, sustainable math improvement plans across a school or school district or both. And we’re going to look at a particular, you know, that component, which is the relationship between say, senior admin, school admin. So we got the site leaders.

and also say the coaches between those two different say sets of leadership. And why I think this is an important part of any sort of sustainable and aligned improvement plan is some of the research we’ve dug into from systems for instructional improvement. This book that we’ve referenced a few times here on the podcast, we’ve used it to kind of support some of the districts that we’re supporting. But they make a point to say that the coordination between

say the district office, school principal, and the math coach has to have a streamlined approach. And if we don’t have that streamlined approach, then we’re not, say, positioning ourselves to make the most impact in classrooms for teacher practice, for student achievement. So we want to talk about that here today. What does it look like when we’re supporting administrators at the site level? What are our roles and responsibilities if we’re math coordinators or maybe administrators at the district office level?

And then what does that look like supporting coaches, whether that coach is then say tied to the district office, but supporting in classrooms, or is that coach tied to schools and then supporting in classrooms? So we wanna talk about these pieces and what it takes to maybe streamline this approach and put yourselves in your system in the best place to see your goals hit and see achievement shift in your system.

Yvette Lehman: We’re going to start with a little audit. This is going to be a reflection and bear with me as I navigate us through this audit. But essentially at the district level, if you are a superintendent or a director or a math coordinator, what is your role in supporting school level leadership? Because we know, you know, research has continued to tell us that if we want to see change, if we want to see improvement, the

greatest impact is at the school level. So as a district lead, what are you actively doing to build the capacity of your school level leaders so that they are positioned to support the math work? So I’m going to have you think for a moment. If you are in that role, put that hat on, or if you are a principal, you can ask yourself, what is my district doing to support me right now? So if you are at a zero level of implementation, then there’s no effort to involve school administration in the work around math.

Jon Orr: What do mean by zero, a zero of implementation?

Yvette Lehman: It means that like you have you have yet to start to see you know significant change in strengthening this area which is like the district level’s responsibility to build the capacity of administrators to be instructional leaders in math. So it’s like you haven’t done this work yet you’re having no impact right now so you’re at a zero so like you’ve made no effort to involve your principles in this work.

Jon Orr: Right. So you’re, right. You’re talking about this spectrum that you’ve built to help, know, the spectrum, this rubric that you’re using to help shift, you know, support for site level leadership in mathematics that we as say, math coordinators or senior admin at the district office level are using.

to guide us in some of the work that we’re doing to see if we have a zero level of implementation on supporting those folks. This is a tool that we use with our team. So Yvette is kind of unpacking this spectrum, this rubric that we here internally have developed to support those teams. And that’s what she was referring to as audit.

Yvette Lehman: Yes, so that would be a zero. There’s been no effort to engage school administration in the Workaround Math.

Jon Orr: Right. Where are we? Do we stand there? Do we not stand there? you can, I think we’re asking, you’re asking them to reflect like, are you a zero? Right. Yep. Okay.

Yvette Lehman: Are you a zero? Okay. Or are you a one? So a one we would define as the district shares updates or information with administrators. So it’s almost like awareness, like this is happening, but there’s no structured support to build their capacity. So they may have an awareness that this is the work that’s happening in math, but there’s no professional development or structures in place to really involve them in anything more than awareness.

Jon Orr: What’s, what’s in it, what do you think is an example? share something that you might seem typical when we talk with those disters who are starting out, you when you got them those calls with those coordinators, those team members who are like, this is where we are and we asked them about this. And then what would you say is like typical at that level one implementation?

Yvette Lehman: So an example of level one is the district level team is doing all of the work, owning all of the works that might be the math coordinator and the coaches. And they go to a principal meeting for 45 minutes and they tell them about their work.

Kyle Pearce: And you know what’s what what I see is problematic here is the idea that they get an idea of what’s happening, but they’re not really equipped to do anything to support the work in the school. So for example, I’m imagining John, if this is taking place in my district, you know, I might have a day where coaches are coming into my building and I’m an administrator and it’s like, OK, I remember they talked about this.

let them do all that stuff. But then when that coach leaves, like, it leaves with, it’s a perfect way to put it. There’s very little residue, except maybe in that one classroom or the two or the however many classrooms they made it into. But again, there’s nothing really that I am equipped to do to nurture the work that was done there. And therefore, we’re left with essentially,

Jon Orr: It leaves with them.

Kyle Pearce: an idea and now maybe awareness in a couple of classrooms, but probably nothing more than that taking place.

Jon Orr: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like the learning doesn’t, because each school is typically is typically responsible for their own school improvement plans or school improvement goals and specifically a math goal. You know, we we should be owning that work as an administrator. And if we have not, say, supported that work or the creation of that goal or helping that administrator own that goal.

We’ve just said like, here are district goals. And we do have support at that level, we can send a coach out to your school to support the district goals. But if we haven’t say made like that particularly, this is where we’re sitting at a one, right? if that’s the case where say the math coach is say, reporting to the district office, like in your districts, like your district is like your coaches are not.

say tied to a specific school and therefore report to a principal. They report to say a superintendent or a principal at that level, that support level at the district office. Studies show that to have the most impact in classrooms, it would be ideal if coaches were then reporting at the school level to principals. at that same time, what they’re seeing is that

Sometimes principals because you’re maybe at a level one, you’re miss they’re misusing the time with those coaches or they say, oh, we need coverage in this class. So we need it all over. So we need some some one on one support in this thing over here. And so all of a sudden, the coach who’s normally supposed to be supporting instruction and say curriculum support in the classroom for math is now rerouted to other areas. And that’s typically what happens. But they’re saying like the best case scenario.

is if the coach does report to the district office, but then only supports one or two schools so they can build those relationships that those at school level coaches already have to gain say traction that way. So when you’re at a one, it’s like you’ve got like some info is passed like here, but then we’re not supporting you on say creating those goals or supporting those goals. And then all of sudden the coaches may come in and go, and that’s the case where like they leave, know, they leave with like the work, but you’re saying Kyle. to kind of go, it all leaves out the door because there’s no ownership in the work at a level one.

Kyle Pearce: So Yvette, take us through how, like what does it look like to get to higher stages here in order to make this more effective? Because when administrators say reroute a coach from doing say the work in math to do something else, what that kind of says is like they’re like they don’t see the value in it probably because they don’t know enough about it. So what do we need to do in order to sort of move them up here along this continuum?

Yvette Lehman: So what we’ve defined as a Level 2, and remember this is the district’s role in supporting administrators. So at a Level 2, the district provides occasional PD for administrators or invites them to attend the mass sessions. So imagine the last one I described, it’s like, we’re just going to create awareness. So we’re just telling you what’s happening. We’re not involving you. This next stage is saying we’re opening the door for you to attend the PD alongside your team. Or we might be actually planning a professional development day specifically for administrators. That’s our, how we define a level two.

Kyle Pearce: Got it, got it. And I’m picturing, in our own experience, there was a great chunk of time working together in our district, my former district, where it wasn’t even just inviting administrators, but we were actually really essentially like, force is the wrong word, but we strongly, strongly requesting that administrators join in that work so that they could.

understand what’s going on, experience it. And as we always talk about it, really have their own math epiphanies. Cause imagine this, it’s like if an administrator is there and they get to experience what we’re hoping teachers are going to experience, which is what we want students to experience. We then are slowly building this alignment of like, I think I get the idea of what it is that we’re after. So what does that look like as we continue moving along? So, you know, we’ve invited them,

Clearly that’s going to be helpful. What if somebody’s here and they’re going, I want to make sure like I knock the socks off of this particular port portion of the audit. What does that look like and sound like?

Yvette Lehman: Alright, so our level three we’ve described as the district coordinates ongoing PD for administrators tied to the math vision, but they also facilitate partnerships and collaborative goal setting with the central office team and coaches.

So this idea is that, you know, not only are we providing professional development opportunities geared towards the administrators to build their capacity, help them experience the learning and the vision for mathematics, but what we’re saying is the co it is not the coach who owns the work. The coach is not going to lead math improvement in the district and in your school. This is a coordinated collaborative effort between the math coordinator, the coach and the principal.

and ultimately, of course, the staff. But this is not, you know, somebody else is going to come in and do this work.

Jon Orr: Exactly. So like you’re going to self assess yourself at a three, if you can honestly say that we we are collaborating in owning the math professional development happening at our school to help meet our school improvement goals and say, which are in support of the district goals. And that’s, that’s really the look for here is like, do we have say that collaboration where we’re, owning this and everyone has set this as a priority to own it and not, you know, thinking this person as clearly

put this on someone else’s shoulders. Like you know, when you walk into a building, whether you’re there or not, and that’s what you’re looking for.

Kyle Pearce: Right. And I think like schools that are doing really well tend to get close or maybe be a part of this this three zone that we’re talking about. But the challenge is, is that even in some of those buildings, they might not necessarily know if anything’s really happening other than anecdotally. And I think this is the part like some people might be saying like there can’t be another level.

but there actually is, what is the level, and this is probably the level that we’re really pushing all of our district improvement program districts along in, right, is really trying to not only address this, not only get them to own the work, but really this is where we build in like the sustainability piece, the actually understanding what it is that we’ve done and whether there’s been an impact. And if there hasn’t been an impact,

So we have the data so that we can go back and say why not and what might we do differently? What does it look like for someone to hit this quote unquote level four stage of this continuum here event?

Yvette Lehman: So we’ve defined it as the district ensures sustained high quality learning experiences for administrators. They align observation tools. So if there’s any type of, you know, performance evaluation or any type of formal assessment of teachers practice, that tool is aligned to best practices in math and the work that we’re doing around math improvement. And I like this line in particular. The district holds the administrator accountable to math-related objectives and key results.

Kyle Pearce: I want you to unpack accountable because I feel like some people hear that word and they can be interpreted as positive or negative, you know, and we certainly don’t want this to feel punitive or, you know, anything like that because this has to, again, we have to own the work, but the accountability piece is really just being able to speak to why things are happening the way they are. And when they don’t work out the way we had hoped or wanted,

that we have sort of like a next step, think really is sort of the key piece. Like what does that look like and sound like when we talk about being accountable in that particular scenario?

Yvette Lehman: We often talk about, you know, if something’s not measured and monitored, it often becomes less of a priority. And so I think that accountability comes to this idea. And if we go back to one of our previous descriptors, it’s like, we are collaboratively creating this coordinated plan where there’s a math goal established for that school that’s supported by the coach, by the principal, by the central office team and built, you know, in collaboration with

staff of course as well. And the idea is if we’re not happy with the results we’re getting, then we need to commit to making a change. We need to commit to leveraging data and unpacking best practice and all of these things. And at the end of the year we need to be able to ask ourselves

Did we make the change we were hoping to make this year? And the problem when there’s no accountability is that the fires end up taking up all of our time. And then another year goes by and we haven’t seen, you know, change or system improvement around math teaching and learning. And, you know, it’s now September and we’re starting all over again. And so I think you mentioned before I shared this final descriptor about

sustainability, ownership, commitment to change over time because we know change takes time. And if it’s only the central office team or the coach who has been positioned to be responsible or accountable to math work in the district, it’s probably never going to happen. Or if it is, it’s going to be tiny.

Like the impact is going to be so small and limited to the touch points those coaches have because likely there are not many of them.

Kyle Pearce: Right, right. And you know, we’ve been talking about the role of the district and I think without the district taking on this role and taking it seriously, like you’re kind of rolling the dice that you’ll have administrators that are passionate about mathematics and math improvement and you know, they see that as being something that’s really important. And you’re also

rolling the dice that maybe some are gonna focus more or only on literacy or they’re gonna focus on something completely different that you know feels really important and imperative which I’m guessing it probably is like whatever that thing is so I love that we’ve got now a district role but that also means that we have a role for administrators here as well so we also need to sort of think about okay now that the district has sort of taken on their role hopefully we’re

we’re nudging down that continuum. It’s not going to happen overnight, So as you probably, like as you mentioned here, Yvette, I think without having and taking it really seriously what the district’s role is in math improvement and making sure that we’re putting pieces in place to empower our administrators to do great work in the building, we’re kind of leaving it to chance, right? We’re kind of leaving it to chance that.

You know, this one administrator who maybe was passionate about mathematics while they were teaching in the classroom, they might take that and take that torch into a leadership role. You might have some others that didn’t feel comfortable teaching mathematics when they were teaching, and therefore they’re probably less inclined to want to take this battle on head first. They’re probably going to focus on something maybe they feel more comfort, comfort with. So there’s a massive role here for the district in ensuring that we position our administrators.

to lead their buildings. However, that also means that we’ve got to talk a little bit about the role of the administrator in every single building. And instead of doing that this time, I think this is a great spot for us to wrap up for today’s episode and in next district leader version. I know we’re leaving you hanging. We’re going to talk a little bit about the principal’s role. And before we get there, I want you to think to yourself,

Jon Orr: Now we’re leaving everyone hanging.

Kyle Pearce: What does that continuum look like and sound like to you? So think ahead and think, you know, what does a zero sort of look like and sound like? What does a one look like and sound like all the way to a four along this continuum? What would that look like and sound like when we look at the principal or the administrator’s role in a building in order to lead this work and ensure that we are actually heading in the right direction so that we can ensure mathematics is accessible.

and attainable for every student that comes through our doors.

Jon Orr: Yeah, yeah, what I like about this rubric or this continuum is not necessarily to say like, you, you, it has to be like this. And if you’re going to be unsuccessful, if you can’t get to level four on each of these rubrics, I think, but because we know that there are massive pieces here that we’re shifting, because you’re now saying, I’m identifying that administrators play an important role in the work we’re trying to do with teachers.

and math improvement as a whole and knowing that and identifying that that is an important person role that you want to bring into the fold for your planning purposes is massive. Like that part is massive because it’s likely that maybe you just not brought that into the fold because as a math coordinator, you’ve been solely focused on helping teachers shift practice and then going, actually, I need to do that, but I also need to have a strategy to support

administrators in this work as well. And that’s why we bring this up. So if you do want a copy of say this rubric and there’s this kind of continuum that we’ve developed here to support administrators, then you can head on over to the show notes page and grab a copy of that and download it so you can have a peek. And then Kyle’s saying, you know, before you have a peek at the principal role, do a little bit of anticipation, you know, do a little bit of predicting what that could look like and then have a peek at the principal role because it’ll be on the same.document. We’ll keep this going into the next episode.

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