The worthy quest for greater coherence

This post is adapted from an email originally shared on April 28, 2023. If you would like to receive future emails, you can sign up here.

Every leader of a state or school system I know regularly gets asked the question, “how do all of the things we are doing fit together?”

Coherence is the holy grail of education. We long for a coherent student experience, a coherent marketplace, a coherent instructional program, a coherent message. The draw of coherence is strong because examples of incoherence are everywhere. We see incoherence when students are asked to do totally different things in math class and math intervention block, in the mixed messages that teachers get from their curriculum and assessments about what to teach, in the similar — but different — versions of school plans principals need to complete, and in the way different departments use different language.

Education comes by some of this incoherence honestly. Authority over education is diffused by design; there is no center to play air-traffic control. Legislation at different levels doesn’t work from the same framework, let alone glossary. Different funding streams have requirements that pull in different directions. Different instructional products have different approaches and structures.

But some of education’s incoherence is accidental friction — the product of rapid decisions, different people creating different pieces of the puzzle without a shared understanding of the bigger picture, or missing key perspectives in design.

For the last two years, I had the honor of working with leaders of four departments in one state with the goal of driving more coherence. Based on stakeholder feedback, which consistently lifted confusion about how work connected as a problem during ESSER planning meetings, the offices responsible for school improvement, student support, special education, and teaching, learning, and assessment came together with the hope that “if the state agency can clarify and connect work better, the state will be able to support school systems and schools more effectively, leading to a stronger experience for educators and more impact learning for students.”

I am in awe of how invested the team was in seeing it through during the complex years of COVID recovery. This winter, after two years of hard work, the state released an updated framework for a multi-tiered system of support. All four teams see their work reflected in this shared framework, and each team is ready to use the framework as they support schools across the state. They also released a shared glossary that all four teams will use to guide their tools and guidance.

The work has not reached schools yet. There is more to do to build capacity across teams and to sustain the routines necessary to bring the framework to life, but getting to the place of conceptual alignment was significant progress — and the first step toward making a meaningful difference that will be felt by districts, teachers, and educators across the state. The team is also now excited to bring other teams in the department into the work.

Facilitating the first phase of this quest involved helping the team:

• Carve out and protect time to get to know the work that other departments are doing enough to connect dots
• Get close to schools to experience the impact of mixed signals
• Build relationships and trust to help team members make decisions within commitment to the whole not just each part
• Develop a process to negotiate and litigate language: What words will we use? What words won’t we use? Do we all understand those words to mean the same thing?
• Build the habit of bringing early stage documents and process recommendations for feedback and alignment review with other processes before hitting “release”

This project inspired me and changed my thinking in some big ways. As we took stock of the way state initiatives intersected at the school level, I was thunderstruck by how much time and brain space is wasted by different programs getting layered on top of each other and how easily guidance pulls educators in different directions, leaving them confused about what to do. I saw more clearly the steep cost of incoherence for kids. It was especially vivid in reading as educators try to juggle a bonkers combination of curricula with different parts, screeners with different schemas, different progress monitoring tools, and multiple intervention programs. I have rarely been described as a patient person, but this project grew my commitment to measure twice and cut once and weigh deeply the cost of adding “another thing.”

Supporting coherence will never be urgent. Incoherence causes paper cuts, not broken legs. But paper cuts hurt. This project showed me that strengthening coherence is a major undertaking not only because it is complex, people-centered work but because it is rarely done. But I learned from this experience that the juice is worth the squeeze. Educators and leaders should be frustrated by everything that makes a hard job harder. Driving stronger coherence can save time and precious energy, give everyone involved a stronger sense of shared purpose, and empower educators to make instruction work for kids.

We are all either fueling coherence or incoherence. What can be done?

• Educators can strengthen coherence for students by thinking about the costs of switching between different instructional materials as a factor in decision making.
• School leaders can strengthen coherence for their teams by making connections between initiatives and by sharing clear feedback about incoherence in the systems they experience.
• System and state leaders can get all team leaders in a room and ask them to regularly norm on how work connects. They can support time and focus on getting to a unified framework and shared glossary and charge one team or person with reviewing all new guidance and processes to make sure the language is clear and consistent.
• Media can shine a light on the costs of incoherence and bring caution to any coverage that creates a “new thing.”

For my part, I will do much more to look for connections in these emails and the way I support leaders.