Repurposing Leadership for Math Classrooms

Part 1: When Numbers Matter More Than Names

This one is special because one year ago, I began the journey to create MathEd Efficacy. Over the last year, I've reflected on my experiences across 16 years in mathematics education. Growing from a new classroom teacher to serving in instructional leadership has broadened my perspective in ways I never expected.

Much of what I've written over the past year has been my own story. The lessons I've learned. The mistakes I've made. The beliefs I've challenged. The experiences that have shaped who I am as a mathematics educator.

As I celebrate one year of MathEd Efficacy, it feels like the right time to continue that story through a different lens.

It's July. End-of-year summative assessment results have been analyzed, sorted, and placed into color-coded spreadsheets. District and campus leaders know the "what." They know which standards students struggled with. They know which campuses exceeded expectations and which ones fell short.

What's often less clear is the how.

How did students experience mathematics every day? What messages were teachers receiving long before students entered the room? What conditions existed before those scores were ever produced?

The difficult conversations with principals have already happened. Priorities have been established. Targets have been set. Expectations for the new school year have been communicated. The message has been delivered. The question is how it will be translated.

Every decision made from this point forward shapes how teachers experience leadership and how students will experience mathematics.

What we do next matters. It sets the tone for the entire school year. It is one of the first opportunities we have to build teacher efficacy and strengthen mathematics instruction. It can also be the moment when pressure begins to trickle through every leadership meeting, every PLC, every planning conversation, and eventually every math classroom.

Pressure rarely arrives with bad intentions. More often, it sounds like urgency.

"We have to move these scores."

"We have to tighten up instruction."

"We cannot have another year like this."

None of these statements is wrong. They come from leaders who deeply care about students. The twist comes in how those messages move through the systems we've built. The filter through which a leader receives the message and communicates it to those they lead is where the experience of mathematics begins to change and it's often the point where names begin to give way to numbers.

The message from the Area Superintendent becomes the campus priority. The campus priority becomes the focus of coaching conversations. Coaching conversations become the topic of PLCs for the entire semester. The work from those PLCs becomes the look-fors during classroom observations. Every day, students absorb the weight of adult urgency, often without an intentional conversation about how they should be experiencing mathematics. In the end, the children never see the spreadsheet, but they experience every decision it influences.

The first mistake is allowing the color-coded spreadsheet to become the finish line rather than the starting point.

In 2020, as an Instructional Coach and Teacher of Record, the school year began with a data wall in a locked classroom. It held student data from the end of the previous year. Every few weeks, we physically moved student cards to represent growth.

"The wall never told us who our students were. It told us where to begin."

I've also sat in on very different data meetings. Meetings where teachers were so overwhelmed they didn't even realize they had something worth celebrating. The culture had become one of pressure, and gains were quickly passed over because the focus immediately shifted to what was still missing.

Somewhere along the way, we began weaponizing the data instead of learning from it. We forgot that every percentage point represents students with names, stories, strengths, and unfinished learning. Numbers tell us what happened, but not always why. We also forgot that behind every color on that spreadsheet is a teacher who has invested time, energy, and heart into those same students. Data was never intended to shame. It was intended to inform. The moment it becomes a weapon instead of a tool, we stop creating conditions for growth and start creating conditions for fear.

Let's begin shifting our data meetings into spaces where everyone involved learns and leaves with a sense of purpose, not feeling like they've been handed five more things they aren't doing right.

Before your next data meeting, ask yourself:

• Does this data tell me who this child is, or where to begin?

• Is this conversation creating curiosity and collective responsibility, or pressure and compliance?

• When teachers leave this meeting, will they feel more equipped to serve students or more defeated by the numbers?

• Would we have the same conversation if the children behind the numbers were sitting across the table from us?

Coming up....Part 2: Coaching Is Not About a Checklist

As a math educator who has moved from the classroom to the district office, I write from a perspective shaped by every level of instructional work. I've taught in the classroom (12 years), designed intervention systems, coached teachers while remaining a Teacher of Record, led districtwide instructional implementation, and continued to write and develop mathematical tasks for students along the way. I've seen the work from every instructional level, and that's the lens I bring to this conversation.