We've Made It Easier to Observe Teachers. Have We Made It Easier to Develop Them?

We have more classroom data than ever. But are we creating the conditions teachers need to learn, practice, and grow?

We have become remarkably good at observing teachers.

Today, school leaders can walk into a classroom with a tablet, capture photographs, record videos, upload artifacts, complete rubrics, and generate reports that organize nearly every aspect of instruction. We can track observation trends, monitor evaluation completion, and produce dashboards that give district leaders greater visibility into what's happening across classrooms.

And in many ways, that's progress. Technology has made documentation more efficient, feedback more accessible, and instructional patterns easier to identify.

But I keep coming back to one question:

Have we made it easier to observe teachers without making it easier to develop them?

Because seeing what teachers are doing and helping teachers grow are two very different things. And somewhere between the walkthrough, the feedback form, and the dashboard, I wonder whether we've lost sight of the actual purpose of instructional leadership.

Feedback Is Not the Entire Learning Process

Imagine a principal visiting a classroom and noticing that students have very few opportunities to engage in meaningful academic discourse. After the observation, the teacher receives feedback:

Increase student-to-student discussion. Ask more open-ended questions. Provide opportunities for students to explain their reasoning.

All reasonable suggestions. But what happens next?

Does the teacher know how to facilitate productive student discourse? Does she understand how to scaffold conversations for students who struggle to express their thinking? Has she seen examples of what this practice looks like in her subject area? More importantly, has she had an opportunity to practice?

We often assume that once teachers receive feedback, they know what to do with it. But feedback identifies an opportunity for improvement. It doesn't automatically provide the knowledge, skills, or confidence necessary to make that improvement happen.

A teacher might understand that students need to talk more without knowing how to structure conversations that deepen understanding. A teacher might watch a video of an effective practice without knowing how to adapt it to tomorrow's lesson. And a teacher might receive five excellent recommendations but lack the time, support, or opportunity to learn even one of them well.

Teachers have been naming this gap for years. In the Gates Foundation's Teachers Know Best study (BCG, 2014), one teacher described the pattern plainly: "We all get observed by the administration. There's written feedback that comes with it. But not mentoring, coaching, pairing." The same study found that only about half of teachers had received any coaching at all in the previous year.

We cannot expect teachers to consistently implement practices they haven't had meaningful opportunities to learn. Feedback is part of professional learning. It is not the entire learning process.

Can Teachers Safely Say, "I Don't Know How"?

Here's another question we don't ask often enough. Can a teacher sit across from their principal or instructional coach and say:

"I really don't know how to do that. Can you help me?"

Not because they're unwilling. Not because they don't care. But because they genuinely haven't learned how.

Would that admission be met with curiosity and support? Or would the teacher worry that acknowledging a gap might influence their evaluation, reputation, or standing in the school?

That worry is documented, too. In the same Gates study, coaching carried a stigma: it was widely perceived as a last resort for low performers, something assigned when a teacher was in trouble rather than offered as a normal part of growing.

This is where trust becomes essential. We tell teachers to create classrooms where students feel safe taking intellectual risks, asking questions, making mistakes, and admitting when they don't understand. But have we created those same conditions for teachers? How can we expect teachers to model the vulnerability of learning if they don't feel safe being learners themselves?

When professional feedback is closely associated with evaluation, teachers may become more concerned with demonstrating competence than revealing what they need to learn. And when teachers feel compelled to appear proficient, we lose opportunities for honest conversations about instructional practice.

No dashboard can manufacture that trust. No observation rubric can replace the human relationships that make professional vulnerability possible. Technology can support communication and learning, but leaders must create the conditions in which teachers feel safe asking for help.

Do We Even Agree on What We're Looking For?

Now consider another challenge. Imagine five administrators observing the same classroom.

One sees students sitting quietly and concludes that they're engaged. Another sees students talking and questions whether the teacher has established effective classroom management. A third sees students completing an assignment and interprets their productivity as evidence of learning.

But what are students actually thinking about? Are they explaining their reasoning? Making connections? Challenging ideas? Constructing understanding? Or simply completing the task they've been assigned?

If instructional leaders don't share a clear understanding of what high-quality student thinking looks and sounds like, what exactly are we measuring? We can collect hundreds of observations and organize them into beautiful dashboards, but the quality of those insights depends on the quality of our observations and the shared understanding behind them.

This is why instructional calibration matters. Leaders need opportunities to study instruction together, examine evidence of student thinking, challenge their assumptions, and develop a common language for what meaningful learning looks like. Otherwise, we risk becoming increasingly efficient at collecting inconsistent information.

And even when our data is accurate, we still face the harder question: What will we do with what we've learned?

Why Are Teachers Still Learning on Islands?

For years, we've approached much of teacher development as an individual responsibility. A teacher receives feedback. A teacher identifies a professional goal. A teacher is expected to improve. Perhaps they're given a resource, encouraged to observe a colleague, or directed toward a professional development session. And then they return to their classroom, where much of the work of figuring things out happens alone.

The isolation is measurable. In the Gates study, only 7 percent of teachers reported that their schools had strong collaboration models, even though where strong collaboration existed, teachers' satisfaction with their day-to-day work was dramatically higher.

But teaching is too complex, and the challenges students face are too important, for professional growth to depend entirely on individual effort. What if we approached teacher development differently?

Imagine a grade-level team recognizing a shared instructional challenge: students can solve problems, but they struggle to explain their reasoning. Instead of giving each teacher a separate list of recommendations, the team comes together to learn. They examine a research-informed instructional practice. They discuss why it works, watch examples, ask questions, and consider how it fits into their upcoming lessons. They rehearse the practice together. Then each teacher tries it in their classroom, not as another initiative to implement perfectly, but as an opportunity to learn.

When the team reconvenes, the conversation changes. Instead of asking, "Did you implement the strategy?" they ask:

"What did students say or do?" "Where did they struggle?" "What surprised us?" "What should we adjust next time?"

Now classroom observations have a different purpose. They're no longer simply opportunities to document what teachers are or aren't doing. They become opportunities to understand how a shared instructional practice is influencing student learning. And teachers are no longer navigating professional growth alone. They're learning together.

This is not just a hopeful idea; it is where the strongest evidence in teacher development points. Kraft, Blazar, and Hogan's 2018 meta-analysis of 60 causal studies, published in Review of Educational Research, found that coaching, meaning sustained, practice-focused support rather than one-time feedback, improved teachers' instruction by about half a standard deviation and student achievement as well. The same research carries an honest warning: effects shrink as programs scale, which means the structure that carries the support matters as much as the support itself.

Professional Learning Should Build More Than Skills

There's another benefit to this approach that deserves attention: belonging.

Teachers spend much of their day surrounded by students, yet teaching can be an incredibly isolating profession. When professional learning becomes a shared experience, teachers have opportunities to build relationships around the work that matters most. They can admit uncertainty without feeling alone. They can experience the satisfaction of solving instructional challenges together.

This doesn't eliminate the very real challenges of compensation, workload, or working conditions. But a professional culture where teachers feel supported, valued, and connected to their colleagues can make a meaningful difference in how they experience their work. And perhaps we should be asking whether our instructional leadership systems are helping build that culture or unintentionally reinforcing isolation.

Because developing teachers isn't simply about improving instructional techniques. It's also about developing their professional confidence, judgment, relationships, and collective capacity to improve learning.

What Is the Return on Our Investment?

School districts invest significant resources in teacher evaluation systems, walkthrough platforms, instructional frameworks, professional development, and data management. Many of these investments serve legitimate purposes. Evaluation matters. Documentation matters. Feedback matters. Efficiency matters.

But the spending has been studied, and the returns are hard to find. The Gates Foundation study put national spending on teacher professional development at about $18 billion a year, with a typical teacher spending 89 hours a year on professional learning, and only 29 percent of teachers highly satisfied with what they received. TNTP's The Mirage (2015) went further: the large districts it studied spent an average of $18,000 per teacher, per year on development, yet only about 3 in 10 teachers improved substantially over the study period, and researchers could find no particular kind or amount of professional development that consistently helped teachers improve.

We often measure the number of observations completed, the percentage of evaluations submitted, or the frequency of feedback provided. Those measures tell us whether activities occurred. They don't necessarily tell us whether professional learning happened.

What if we asked different questions?

• What new instructional practices have teachers learned this semester?
• What opportunities have they had to rehearse those practices before implementing them?
• How are teacher teams using evidence of student thinking to refine instruction?
• Do teachers feel safe asking their leaders for help?
• Can instructional leaders describe how their support has changed teacher practice?
• What evidence suggests students are experiencing deeper, more meaningful learning?

These questions don't eliminate the need for observation data. They give that data a more meaningful purpose. And they shift our attention from monitoring instructional activity to developing instructional capacity.

The Next Step Isn't Another Dashboard

I am not suggesting that we abandon teacher evaluation, classroom walkthroughs, or the technology that supports them. We need to understand what's happening in classrooms. We need evidence. We need accountability.

But we also need to recognize the limitations of observation without intentional professional learning. A classroom visit can reveal an instructional challenge. A rubric can help describe it. A dashboard can make patterns visible. A video can provide a model. But none of those things, on their own, ensures that a teacher has learned something new, developed confidence, or changed their practice.

That requires something more. It requires leaders who see themselves not simply as evaluators of instruction, but as facilitators of professional learning. It requires time for teachers to study, question, practice, and reflect together. It requires trust. And it requires a shared commitment to examining what students are actually thinking and learning.

We have spent years improving our ability to see instruction. Perhaps it's time we become just as intentional about helping teachers learn how to improve it.

Because the goal was never to complete more walkthroughs, generate better reports, or build more sophisticated dashboards. The goal was to create better learning experiences for children. And if we want students to become confident, curious, capable learners, we must create schools where their teachers can be learners, too.

So here's the question I would leave every principal, instructional coach, and district leader with:

If I walked into your school tomorrow, could you show me not just what your teachers need to improve, but how your school is helping them learn, practice, and grow together?

Because that is where instructional leadership becomes instructional development.

Sources

• Boston Consulting Group for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Teachers Know Best: Teachers' Views on Professional Development, December 2014. ($18 billion annual PD spending and 89 hours per teacher, p.3; only 29 percent of teachers highly satisfied, p.3; about half of teachers received any coaching, p.6; observation without coaching quote, p.6; coaching perceived as a last resort, pp.6-7; only 7 percent of teachers report strong collaboration models, p.8.)
• TNTP, The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development, 2015. (Districts studied spent an average of $18,000 per teacher per year; only about 3 in 10 teachers improved substantially; no particular kind or amount of PD consistently helped teachers improve.)
• Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547-588. (60 causal studies; pooled effects of 0.49 standard deviations on instruction and 0.18 on student achievement; effects smaller in larger programs.)