Lead With Evidence: How the Student Experience Can Focus Instructional Work

As districts make the shift to rigorous, knowledge-rich curricula, expectations for instructional leadership rise right alongside them. Principals and assistant principals take on greater complexity as instructional leaders—coaching, calibrating, and strengthening what teaching and learning look like day to day in their buildings.

In the process, a common challenge can arise: many school leaders avoid giving meaningful feedback because they don’t consider themselves content experts. The result isn’t just missed feedback—it’s often no meaningful instructional feedback at all on the moments that matter most, especially when teachers are working through complex materials and tasks.

Our partner, Dr. Andre Dukes, Assistant Superintendent for Academics at Cherokee County School District in South Carolina, has been tackling that challenge head-on by reframing the role of instructional leadership with support from Leading Educators. He says,

We’re no longer starting with what the teacher is doing; we’re looking at what the students are doing.

Through ongoing classroom observations, leaders gather evidence of students’ access, engagement, and learning, grounded in clear instructional frameworks and priorities. That rich story of the student experience becomes the foundation for coaching and feedback conversations as well as shared routines in PLCs.

I spoke with Dr. Dukes about how Cherokee County is building leader confidence using student-centered observation tools and making PLCs the engine that connects planning, classroom practice, and feedback.

Giving meaningful instructional feedback can be intimidating, especially if the school leader feels like they aren’t a content expert in a particular subject. How can leaders overcome that challenge?

I get it—many leaders come up through one grade band or one subject area and are hesitant to give feedback because they believe, “I’m not the content specialist.”

But I tell them plainly: you don’t need to be the content specialist. Teachers should be the content experts. What I need principals to be is instructional specialists.

Your job is to look at instruction through the lens of what students are doing, what students understand, and what students can produce. ​​The more you’re in the classroom and observe learning, that’s how you learn instruction. I use myself as an example.

I was not an English teacher. I was not a social studies teacher. I specialized in math/business education, and that’s all I knew. However, as a principal, in order to lead a school and drive change, I needed to visit some of those other classrooms where I wasn’t as comfortable with the content. I started visiting more ELA, Spanish, and other classes to learn what good instruction in those areas looks like while also learning the content. That’s what I tell principals now.

The more you observe instruction in classrooms, the more confident and comfortable you will feel giving feedback in an area where you are not trained. The more we engage with teachers in classrooms and provide meaningful instructional feedback, the more they will engage with us on their content. 

One thing I say is that the smartest person in the room is the room. It’s not just one person who will do this work alone. It’s all of us in the room. This is where the magic happens. We continue to build cohesiveness across our district because we want every student to receive high-quality instruction, regardless of which school or classroom they are in. 

What does instructional feedback grounded in student evidence look like in practice?

For us, it starts with being really clear about what we expect to see in classrooms—what good instruction looks like—so leaders aren’t guessing.

When we observe classrooms, we tell principals and coaches: we’re not looking at what the teacher is doing—we’re looking at what the students are doing.

We provide feedback to the teacher based on what the students can or cannot do. When we identify opportunities where students are struggling or where teachers are providing students with misaligned work that does not align with the HQIM, we provide feedback to the teacher in the form of a question based on what we learn from the students. 

When we make it about student learning, we hope teachers will feel less protective and more motivated to make a change.

For example, in math, we want to walk in and see kids talking to each other and working with each other. What we’ve seen for a long time is math taught in the “traditional” way—the teacher solves a problem on the board, the students watch, and then they go do a bunch of problems just like it. We’ve really tried to shift that.

We want students to show and tell us what they’re thinking, because I believe that when they do, we can really identify where their learning misconceptions lie. It also provides students with an opportunity to engage with one another and have meaningful conversations.

With that in mind, it means the feedback conversation doesn’t start with, “Here’s what you should’ve taught.” It starts with, “Here’s what students showed they understood—and here’s what they didn’t.”

If students can clearly explain the learning intention and success criteria, we should be able to hear them articulate that. Then we connect what we’re seeing back to the lesson’s purpose: what we wanted students to know. What evidence do we have that they got there? What do we do next to move learning forward?

That shift changes everything. It takes feedback from being personal or opinion-based and makes it about student learning, which is what teachers want it to be about, too.

You’ve said this work “starts in the PLC,” and you want school leaders participating in PLCs before they do classroom observations. Why?

In our PLCs, we have certain PLC questions we answer every time. These include “how do we move the learning forward and what do we want our students to know”? It starts there.

We also push PLC teams to bring student evidence to the table: What evidence do you currently have that students know the content or don’t know it?

It’s important for principals to participate in these PLCs as well because they do two things.

• One, it helps them understand what the team planned and what success was supposed to look like.
• Two, it sends a message to teachers: I’m here to support you before it gets to the classroom. That builds trust.

What helps leaders “see instruction” clearly across different subjects and grade bands—especially when they’re outside their comfort zone?

First, leaders have to be willing to learn.

When I took on this role, I immediately recognized that my limitation was in elementary. My background was in high school. Because of that, I spent considerable time in elementary schools observing instruction, visiting classrooms, and having conversations with teachers and students to get an understanding of what elementary instruction looks like. Due to that time, initiative, and my drive to learn about elementary content and instruction, I now feel more comfortable engaging in conversations with elementary teachers about instruction.

At some point, you have to be able to say, “I don’t know this content the way you do—but I do know good instruction. Let’s learn together.” That vulnerability matters.

Second, we use a classroom observation tool that’s intentionally not separated by “elementary vs. middle vs. high.” It focuses on what strong instruction looks like in any classroom, and we organize it around four areas:

• Classroom delivery
• Teacher’s knowledge base
• Learning environment
• Assessment and feedback

Those categories give leaders something stable to look for, talk about, and coach toward—regardless of subject or grade band.

Everyone in our district knows the instructional vision. Everybody knows what they need to do to get there. Again, we talk about HQIMs. We talk about professional development. We’ve talked about teacher clarity and PLCs.

We’ve been saying the same things for three years now. And so I firmly believe that our teachers and our administrators know where we’re heading and know where we want to go. Now that we know where we’re going and everyone knows what we should be doing, how do we monitor to ensure that everyone’s on the same track, providing strong feedback, and adjusting as needed? That is the hardest part of this work.

If you could give one “start here Monday” move to a leader who wants to improve the quality and consistency of feedback, what would it be?

Lead from the front—and stay close to the work.

If you’re asking teachers to take on HQIM, teacher clarity, and academic discourse, then leaders have to be in that learning too. Be present in PD. Participate. Sometimes, even facilitate, even if it’s uncomfortable.

My department is in schools 50 percent of the time. That means that in a week, five days a week, 50 percent of their time should be spent in schools. So they’re in PDs and PLCs every week, allowing them to provide feedback to teachers and principals. They’re observing classrooms. 

For myself, I’ve set up schedules where I visit schools and observe instruction without the principal. I want to conduct walk-throughs myself and then provide principals with feedback. If they need me to come back and do it with them, I’ll do so. However, it’s essential that I’m also in the classrooms to observe along with the school leaders.

Keep the human part centered. I say this a lot: connection before content. If you have a connection with people, with the work, with the community, then coaching conversations become possible. Without connection, feedback doesn’t land, even if it’s technically correct.

So the practical move is: protect time for PLCs and classrooms, and build your feedback around what you can point to—student thinking, student work, and the shared instructional expectations you’ve built together.

Takeaways for Leaders:

1. Redefine the job: Leaders don’t have to be content experts to give useful feedback; they do have to own instructional quality.
2. Start feedback with student evidence: Make walkthrough notes about what students say, do, and produce—not just what adults present.
3. Use PLCs as the calibration engine: Have leaders attend PLCs before observations so feedback is anchored to learning intentions and evidence.
4. Build coherence by showing up: Participation signals commitment; “lead from the front” is not optional if you want implementation to stick.

Stay engaged

Want more conversations with district leaders about what it takes to make high-quality instruction real in every classroom? Keep following the Take 5 series on our blog.