Rebecca A. Huggins

Coming off a nice, long (much needed) holiday, I have returned to my typical, educational reading, and stumbled across an interesting piece by Adam Boxer in which he states instructional coaching might not be all that it is cracked up to be. It’s a provocative and timely claim, since many states have turned to instructional coaching as a way to support job-embedded professional learning for teachers, and to avoid the dreaded one-and-done PL. As states move towards the Science of Reading and legislation is put into place to ensure that the right training helps move educator’s knowledge-base, more and more districts are relying on instructional coaches to help them move the needle.

In my former life, I was a secondary literacy content coordinator for a large school district in coastal North Carolina, and part of my work was to provide training, onboarding, and ongoing content-specific support to our building-level coaches. From a district perspective, having a lot of initiatives, often simultaneously that are prone to waves of political and social factors means that teachers will almost always need continued support in implementation, whether it be in implementing revised standards or instructional techniques. It is often also in the best interest of a district to secure support for large investments—such as the adoption of a new curricular resource or instructional practice—as these represent significant investments for most school districts. So, of course, it makes sense that a district would want someone supporting teachers to utilize the resource well in order to meet the expectation of state-level mandates, particularly around literacy.

North Carolina typically sees over 9,000 new teacher hires annually, with about 15% of beginning teachers leaving within the first three years (Brown, 2024) and roughly 40% of new educators leaving completely within the first five (NCDPI, 2026). Those numbers are staggering. In my district alone, we saw well over 200 new-to-the-profession teachers every year, which meant starting over annually with new training, new onboarding, and new supports. Teacher shortages have meant that many states have turned to alternative licensure programs for teachers (Osnaya-Prieto, 2026), so not only do many schools now have new-to-the-profession teachers, but they also have lateral-entry professionals, who may or may not have any formal education training. This makes carrying out any initiative incredibly challenging, particularly if you do not have some building-level support to carry out those goals. 

In a perfect world, a coach would be a knowledgeable partner who would easily work collaboratively with teachers and teacher teams to get the job done—the job being, improving student outcomes. What is interesting from the studies on the impact of instructional coaching on student outcomes is that while coaching generally improves observable teaching practice (Kraft et al., 2018), many evaluations rely on observational rubrics and broad instructional frameworks that emphasize classroom environment, student engagement, and general instructional quality (Kraft et al., 2018). But, for me, and for most district-level leadership, the value of an initiative really comes down to two questions: What impact does this new thing have on student achievement?  And is it worth the investment? 

Kraft and colleagues aimed to answer that question in this 2018 article. Examining 60 studies of teacher coaching programs in the United States and other developed countries, the authors asked: does helping teachers improve the quality of their instructional practice lead to improvements in student achievement? The big takeaway from their findings was this: while student achievement is very difficult to move, and while coaching has a hard time moving it, it does a better job than almost anything else to improve student outcomes, including merit pay, data-driven instruction and extended learning time (Kraft et al., 2018).  

That’s pretty significant, considering how much we talk about each of those three things separately in education.

It is worthwhile to note that Kraft and colleagues also argue that focused coaching—defined as engaging teachers in the deliberate practice of specific skills—is far more impactful than responsive and directive coaching.  In a recent Chalk & Talk episode, Rachel Canter, Director of Education Policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), shared the sustained, deliberate efforts that were made in the Mississippi First project, to improve outcomes for students in Mississippi.  Her reflections included the importance of ensuring quality coaches, who were utilized to support state-wide initiatives in both math and literacy. Canter also emphasized the importance of getting the “right person in the job.” Coach credibility matters a lot: teachers value coaches who combine deep pedagogical skill with strong content expertise. To ensure this was the case, the coaches that Mississippi deployed had a proven track record of instructional impact and knowledge base and were trained centrally before being sent to the lowest-performing schools in the state. In addition, the coaches were then given additional, intensive training in math or literacy, and enrolled in shadowing & mentorship programs, where new coaches were required to work alongside seasoned coaches in real classrooms to observe and learn how to deliver tough, candid feedback to teachers without being combative (Freitag, 2025). Importantly, there were only 75 coaches who were hired, which meant the state had to be very selective about where these coaches would be placed, and who was selected for the job. 

But Boxer makes some good points that I’ll respond to here. For one thing, he rightly points out that not everyone should be required to engage in coaching. In Kraft’s study, that fact is directly and clearly articulated in his findings: while coaching is a powerful tool for improvement, it is most effective when used as a targeted intervention. We have seen this example clearly in Florida where a statewide mandatory reading coach program involving over 2,300 coaches had very little impact on student achievement, in part due to the challenge of staffing such a large corps of teachers (Marsh et al., 2012). Another important point Boxer makes is how teachers respond to coaches. Good results depend not only on access to coaching, but on teachers’ ability and willingness to engage with focused practice, actionable feedback and sustained refinement. And while deliberate practice is imperative to excellent coaching, school culture plays a significant role in a teacher’s willingness to engage in actionable feedback, requiring relational trust and sustained practice (Kraft et al., 2014).

If not a “magic bullet,” coaching is a high-potency, precision tool that only works when supported by the right school culture and a broader policy framework. While coaching certainly has its limitations, it is one of the few interventions intensive enough to create a large change in teacher behavior (0.49 SD). Where coaching meets its Achilles’ Heel is when we attempt to scale: maintaining quality is difficult when you don’t have enough experts to support teachers, and when teachers are not personally invested in the process. Importantly, the Mississippi Marathon is a good example of how coaching cannot work in a vacuum: it happened in conjunction with knowing what students needed to learn, real accountability for poor performance, and proven instructional strategies, that serve as a bridge to help teachers translate policy into actual classroom practice. 

In truth, the conversation shouldn’t be about whether instructional coaching matters, because the evidence would suggest that it absolutely does. It should be about who is coaching the coaches and whether we are using them strategically. The effectiveness of a coaching model is determined less by the existence of coaches and more by the quality of their expertise and the precision with which that expertise is deployed. Those two decisions ultimately determine whether coaching changes student outcomes—or simply adds another layer to a bureaucratic organizational chart. 

References

Canter, R. (2026, April). Inside the Mississippi marathon. Progressive Policy Institute. https://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PPI_Mississippi-Marathon.pdf

Boxer, A. (2026 Jan 04). Questioning coaching. Carousel: Teaching, Learning, Leading.https://carouselteachlearnlead.substack.com/p/questioning-coaching

Brown, C. (2024 April 5). North Carolina data show increase in teacher turnover, opportunity to strengthen teacher supports. EdNC. https://www.ednc.org/04-05-2024-teacher-turnover-increase-and-replacement-data-state-board-report-shows/

Freitag, E. (2025 Feb 20). A bold state move to improve reading. Thomas Fordham Institute.https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/bold-state-move-improve-reading

Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Explaining heterogeneity in returns to teaching experience. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713519496

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. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654318759268

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction [NCDPI]. (2026 Mar 4). Report shows strong principal retention, teacher attrition rates hold steady for 2024-25 school year. https://www.dpi.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2026/03/04/report-shows-strong-principal-retention-teacher-attrition-rates-hold-steady-2024-25-school-year

Osnaya-Prieto, S. (2026, March 6). Teacher attrition rate in NC holds steady, DPI says. EdNC. https://www.ednc.org/3-6-2026-teacher-attrition-rate-in-nc-holds-steady-dpi-says/

Marsh, J. A., McCombs, J. S., & Martorell, F. (2012). Reading Coach Quality: Findings from Florida Middle Schools. Literacy Research and Instruction, 51(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2010.518662

Stokke, A. (Host). (2026 July 16). The story behind Mississippi’s education turnaround with Rachel Carson (No. 76)  [Audio podcast episode]. In Chalk & Talk. https://chalkandtalkpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-story-behind-mississippi-s-education-turnaround-with-rachel-canter-ep-76/