The Strategic Moment
Summer Is When SY27 Actually Gets Decided
End-of-year data isn’t just a report card. It’s a strategic prompt. Right now, schools are identifying their SY27 priorities and beginning to set budgets around those goals. The leaders who act with intention in June, who use their data to make clear decisions about where to focus, what to fund, and what to stop doing, are the ones who aren’t scrambling to course-correct in October.
The schools that move fastest and most sustainably tend to share one thing: instructional coherence. Not a new initiative. Not a new curriculum. Coherence is the alignment between what teachers teach, how coaches support them, how data is used, and how leaders make decisions. When those four things point in the same direction, schools move. When they don’t, even great individual efforts cancel each other out.
This post is about what it looks like to build that coherence intentionally, starting now.
Leadership in Action
How Navigator Schools Built a Coherent Math System
Andi Hernandez, Director of Academics at Navigator Schools and Accelerate Institute alum, knows this challenge firsthand. When she looked at her network’s math data heading into this school year, she saw something familiar to many leaders: significant variation across campuses. Some teachers were getting strong results. Some coaches were making a real difference. But the outcomes weren’t consistent, and the patterns pointed to a clear root cause: not a curriculum problem, but a coherence problem.
The network was using Illustrative Mathematics, a high-quality instructional material (HQIM) with strong pedagogical foundations. The curriculum was sound. What was missing was the system around it.
Starting With Habits, Not Outcomes
Andi’s first move was counterintuitive. She didn’t start by pushing harder on instruction. She started by building habits. In Cycle 1, her focus with the academic lead team was on two things: coaching habits and data habits. Before expecting instructional improvement, she needed leaders and coaches to consistently do the right things.
The coaching framework she put in place tracked three core pillars:
- Action step reach: the percentage of instructors receiving action steps each week
- Action step quality: the percentage of those action steps that were high quality and tied to specific instructional look-fors
- Walkthrough alignment: whether coaching was showing up visibly in classrooms, not just in conversation
Weekly Site Leadership Team meetings were structured around public commitment to WIGs (Wildly Important Goals), with leaders reporting back the following week on their progress. The result was a layer of accountability that made coaching visible, consistent, and tied to outcomes, not just activity.
The Data Turnaround Challenge
One tension Andi named directly: the time it took for assessment data to move from a student completing a check-in or end-of-unit assessment to being actionable in Illuminate, Navigator’s data platform. Illustrative Math has strong checkpoints built into its structure, but the turnaround time from test to data system to instructional response created a lag that made it hard for teachers and coaches to respond in the moment.
This is a structural challenge many schools face. The assessment exists. The data platform exists. However, by the time the data is ready to act on, the instructional window has often closed. It raises a question worth considering as leaders evaluate tools for SY27: what if the data cycle itself could be part of the coherence solution?
Technology and Coherence
Choosing AI Tools That Strengthen the System You’ve Already Built
AI tools in education are proliferating fast. Every leader will face decisions this summer about which tools to fund, which to cut, and which to try. The frame that matters most isn’t “Is this tool good?” It’s “Does this tool add to or undermine the coherence we’re trying to build?”
The question worth asking of any supplemental tool: does it sit on top of what we’ve already chosen, or does it create a second system alongside it?
When the System Holds Together
The Results at Navigator Schools
When Andi and her team put these pieces in place, the results followed. Navigator Schools moved from 33.7% to 40.6% proficient in math, a gain of nearly seven percentage points. The pattern within that growth is instructive: the strongest gains were concentrated exactly where coaching was most consistent. Where the curriculum, the coaching system, the data structures, and the accountability routines all held together, students moved.
The work ahead for Andi and her team is extending that consistency across the full network. The goal isn’t three strong campuses. It’s four.
Where it translated across the organization, it worked. The focus now is creating more consistency across all of our schools.
Andi Hernandez, Director of Academics, Navigator Schools
A Tool for Leaders
Is Your Instructional System Coherent? A Self-Assessment
The Navigator story is a useful model, but the real question is what it surfaces for your school or network. Use the checklist below to assess where your system is strong and where the gaps are. These are the same areas we examine when we begin working with a new school or district.
📚 Curriculum
- We are using a high-quality instructional material (HQIM) for math.
- Our HQIM is being taught with fidelity across all classrooms, not just some.
- We have looked at our data to understand specifically where fidelity is breaking down.
📊 Assessment
- Our checkpoints, such as exit tickets, cool-downs, and end-of-unit assessments, are turning around quickly enough to inform instruction.
- Teachers and coaches are able to use assessment data before the instructional window closes.
- We have considered whether any tools in our system could shorten that data cycle.
🎯 Coaching
- Coaches are delivering specific, high-quality action steps to teachers on a regular weekly cadence.
- Action steps are tied directly to the instructional look-fors in our curriculum.
- We can see evidence of coaching showing up in walkthroughs and classroom observations.
🗂️ Data Structures
- Our SLT and data meetings are structured around accountability and commitment, not just reporting.
- Leaders are naming WIGs publicly and following up the following week.
- We have a clear picture of which pillar above is our biggest constraint right now.
If you checked everything, your system is in strong shape. If you found gaps, you’ve just identified your 80/20 for SY27. The goal isn’t to fix everything at once. It’s to be honest about which pillar is your constraint and go to work on that one with focus and intention.
Where We Can Help
Accelerate Institute Can Support You at Every Step
Whether you’re working through this checklist and seeing the gaps clearly for the first time, or you already know what needs to change and need a partner to help you move faster, Accelerate Institute is built for exactly this work. We’ve spent 35 years helping school and district leaders build the kind of coherent, high-functioning instructional systems that Navigator Schools is working to extend across their network.
Two of the most direct entry points for leaders focused on math coherence and instructional improvement right now:
Start With Clarity: School Improvement Audits
If your checklist surfaced real questions about where coherence is breaking down, a School Improvement Audit is the fastest path to answers. Our expert coaches conduct a focused diagnostic of your school’s systems, culture, and instructional effectiveness. We surface exactly what’s working, what’s limiting progress, and where to focus next, so that your SY27 decisions are grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
Sustain It: Principal Coaching
Knowing where the gaps are is the first step. Closing them, consistently, over time, is the work. The Navigator story is in part a story about what structured, sustained coaching makes possible. We bring that same model to principals: an external accountability partner who helps you stay focused on the right 80/20, holds the long view when daily urgency crowds it out, and builds the habits of leadership that compound over time.
Ready to Talk?
Through the generous support of our donors, all Accelerate Institute programs and services are significantly subsidized, ensuring schools and districts can access high-quality leadership development at affordable rates, regardless of budget constraints.
Career Opportunities
Principal in Residence @ Intrinsic Schools (Chicago, IL) For the seasoned leader ready to own a school — starting now
The Principal in Residence (PIR) is designed for leaders who have already led — currently or previously serving as a Principal or School Director with at least 5 years in school administration. The PIR is not growing into the principalship — they are stepping into it, with the rare gift of a full first year embedded alongside our current principal to learn the community, build relationships, and develop their vision for the school before fully taking the reins in year two.
Best fit if you are: An experienced school leader who is ready to lead your own school and wants a thoughtful, supported transition rather than being dropped into a new building cold.
Link to apply here.
