Coaching Teachers to Help Students Learn

COACHED: Literacy coach Nancy McLean, right, advises Jessica Grojean in the 5th grade teacher’s classroom in the Adams 12 district outside Denver. Districts are putting more emphasis on coaching teachers as a strategy to improve student achievement.

—Eric Lars Bakke for Education Week

Districts are choosing on-site coaches as a way to enhance their teachers’ instructional practices and thereby improve the chances of their students’ success.

By Bess Keller

Thornton, Colo.

When the Adams 12 school district introduced a new mathematics curriculum to elementary schools several years ago, leaders here turned to an idea both old and new to make the change a success. They created a position dubbed “student-achievement coach” that gives each school a skilled teacher ready to urge her colleagues forward in three areas: putting math across, helping English-language learners in the classroom, and using assessment to improve instruction.

Adams 12 already had coaches for the teaching of reading and writing, and so had experience with the progress teachers can make when help from an accomplished colleague is woven into their work.

“We think the coaching model has been a critical component in the rise of student achievement,” said Superintendent Michael F. Paskewicz, citing three straight years of growth in state test scores, including two years in which Adams 12’s increases outstripped those of the other districts in...