What Makes a School’s Teaching System Work? Lessons From a Texas Elementary School

In the past, education experts loved nothing more than observing schools that demonstrated unusually strong academic growth, attempting to identify the underlying causes and distill methodologies that other schools could replicate. That is understandable; the field of education is rife with new programs promising to solve age-old problems. They would begin by formulating hypotheses: Was it a new curriculum? Better teacher training? A new technological tool? A particularly talented principal?

To be honest, I often approached it this way myself, assuming that if a school achieved outstanding academic results, it must have been excelling in some specific area. But what if a school achieved remarkable results without standing out in any single, obvious way? What, then, would be the reason?

A recent NWEA research brief gave us an answer.

Researchers studied a Texas elementary school where students made nearly twice the national average growth in reading and science during the 2024–25 school year. The school served many students from low-income families, as well as Black and Hispanic students and emergent multilingual learners. It also experienced significant teacher turnover.

In other words, this was not a school succeeding because everything around it was easy.

What caught my attention was that researchers did not identify one revolutionary teaching method. Instead, they found a school where different parts of instruction worked together: curriculum, professional development, classroom observation, coaching, and expectations for students.

The researchers call this a coherent instructional system.

To me, that idea is much more interesting than another story about a “magic” education program.

The Problem With Adding One More Initiative

I have seen a familiar pattern in education.

A school wants to improve reading, so it adopts a new curriculum. Teachers attend a training session. A few months later, another initiative arrives, this time focused on writing, student engagement, or technology. Each decision may make sense by itself. The problem is that teachers can eventually find themselves juggling several different definitions of good teaching.

The NWEA study suggests that improvement is more likely when these pieces are connected. Teachers need to know what they are expected to teach, have time to understand the curriculum, receive practical support, and get feedback on what actually happens in their classrooms.

That sounds simple, but it changes the experience of teaching.

Instead of professional development being something that happens several times a year, teachers in this school had weekly, curriculum-based professional learning. They worked with the material they were actually going to teach, discussed difficult parts of upcoming lessons, anticipated student misconceptions, and considered how to make challenging material accessible.

That last point is particularly important to me.

Keep the Challenge, Change the Support

One of the things I appreciated most about the school’s approach was its treatment of students who needed additional support.

For example, teachers worked with complex texts while supporting emergent multilingual learners through strategies such as visuals, vocabulary support, sentence frames, and opportunities to rehearse ideas before speaking.

The goal was not to give struggling students easier work.

It was to help them participate in the same meaningful thinking.

I think this distinction is easy to lose in a busy classroom. When a student struggles, our instinct is often to simplify the assignment. Sometimes that is necessary. But if we constantly reduce the level of the task, we may unintentionally reduce the student’s opportunity to think deeply.

A better question is often:

What support would allow this student to do the challenging work?

A student may not need an easier text. They may need help understanding key vocabulary. They may not need the writing assignment removed. They may need a model, a sentence starter, or a chance to talk through the idea first. Good scaffolding does not remove the difficulty from learning. It makes meaningful difficulty possible.

Teachers Need to Learn, Too

Another part of the research stood out to me: teachers were not expected to figure everything out alone.

They planned lessons together, discussed what students should be able to do, and thought carefully about what they should listen for during classroom discussions.

This is especially valuable when the goal is something abstract, such as “deeper student thinking.”

Instead of simply telling teachers to increase student discourse, they could ask more concrete questions:

• Can students explain their ideas?
• Can they use evidence?
• Can they respond to a classmate?
• Can they explain why their evidence supports their conclusion?

Those questions turn a vague instructional goal into something teachers can actually observe. And once teachers can observe it, they can improve it.

This is one reason I am cautious about professional development that happens in isolation from everyday teaching. A workshop might introduce a useful idea on Monday, but teachers still have to work out how that idea behaves in a real classroom on Tuesday.

They need opportunities to try, reflect, receive feedback, and try again.

In that sense, teachers need professional learning that looks surprisingly similar to the learning process we want for students.

Observation Should Lead to Better Teaching

The school also used frequent classroom observations and coaching.

What matters here is the purpose of those observations.

There is a big difference between someone entering a classroom to check whether a teacher followed a prescribed procedure and someone entering to understand what students are actually doing. Imagine a teacher notices that students can identify evidence in a text but struggle to explain why that evidence matters.

That observation can immediately shape the next lesson.

Perhaps students need more modeling. Perhaps they need to compare strong and weak explanations. Perhaps the teacher needs to give them more opportunities to discuss their reasoning before writing. The important thing is that observation becomes part of a cycle:

Plan → Teach → Observe → Reflect → Adjust → Teach again.

That cycle is not particularly glamorous. But I think it is one of the most realistic descriptions of how improvement actually happens.

The Lesson I Would Take From This Study

The easiest way to misunderstand the NWEA research would be to turn it into another checklist:

• Provide professional development.
• Use a strong curriculum.
• Observe teachers.
• Offer coaching.

Those things matter, but the deeper lesson is about connection.

The curriculum establishes what students need to learn, while collaborative planning helps teachers prepare to teach it. Classroom observations then show how students respond, giving teachers and coaches a clearer idea of what to adjust. Those lessons can inform the next round of planning. Over time, each part of the process supports the others.

That is what makes the system coherent.

And I think this lesson extends far beyond reading and science. The same principle applies to mathematics, writing, language learning, and even technology-assisted instruction.

A strong curriculum matters, but its impact depends partly on how teachers use it. Even experienced teachers need time, collaboration, and useful feedback. New technology may help, too, but it works best when it serves a clear instructional purpose.

If I were advising a school after reading this research, I would not begin by asking, “What new program should we buy?”

I would ask three simpler questions:

1. Do our teachers share a clear understanding of what strong instruction looks like?
2. Do they have regular time to work together using the curriculum they actually teach?
3. Does classroom feedback help teachers improve rather than simply evaluate them?

If the answer is yes, a school already has something valuable.

The biggest lesson I take from this Texas school is that meaningful improvement does not always come from adding something new. Sometimes it comes from making the things we already have work together.

That may sound less exciting than a revolutionary teaching method or a new piece of educational technology. But after years of watching how students and teachers learn, I think it may be much closer to the truth.

Simon Holmes | Contributing Education Reporter

Simon Holmes is an education reporter who contributes to WuKong Education, covering K–12 education, education technology and issues affecting students and families around the world.

With a background in education and experience as a teacher, Simon brings firsthand insight into classroom learning, student development, and the challenges educators face.

For WuKong Education, he reports on education research, emerging learning trends, policy developments, technology in the classroom, and issues relevant to parents, teachers, and students.