OVERVIEW

PROBLEM

Creating strong leadership teams has been a pervasively challenging improvement hurdle to clear for schools. Research has shown that nearly 70% of educational initiatives/programs fail to be fully implemented and achieve their stated goals (Lyon). This is in large part due to inadequate coaching to assist educators with implementing and maintaining new practices, and the inherent difficulty in creating strong leadership teams to sustain improvement efforts over time. Due to resource constraints, many schools struggle with asking their staff to do more with less, all the while scaling up school improvement efforts using only internal supports. 

SOLUTION

Cultivate Education is a leader in the field of improving implementation outcomes through the use of best practices in teaming and system development. Our end goal is to cultivate local capacity to implement school improvement efforts based upon the needs of each community we serve, and build the local independence to sustain and innovate upon that effort into the future. To accomplish this goal, our partner schools contract for only the supplementary implementation coaching that they need to round out their implementation team, and accomplish their end goals as well. 

Research on effective school improvement emphasizes the critical role of coaching in fostering teacher professional development and aligning practices with evidence-based interventions (Knight). Collective teacher efficacy, the shared belief of a group of educators that their work together can achieve a common cause, has some of the strongest evidence of its power to transform student learning (Visible Learning). Leveraging these research points, a solid implementation team consisting of 4-8 staff members will need: 

• • • • a clearly defined goal/purpose, 
      • a consistent and organized meeting schedule and format,
      • a strong background in behavior, social emotional learning, leadership, and effective communication, and 
      • access to implementation data and advanced data analysis skills.

Coaching researchers have written extensively about the benefits of both individual and group coaching, with recent research indicating that educators who received coaching were four times more likely to carry out newly learned skills than those that did not (). Joyce and Summers (1982) and Rock (2019) found that between 10-15 coaching sessions are needed to improve outcomes, and are most effective when a consistent coaching schedule and collective participation procedures are established and followed.  

In the 2025-26 school year, the Cultivate Education team partnered with nearly 20 schools in several states to supplement their implementation teams in addressing behavioral concerns through systemic improvement. Each of these schools had slightly different goals and cultures, which our team of coaches adapted to, including consistent classroom management, implementing Tier 2 interventions with fidelity, and creating social-emotional recovery spaces and processes for students. This versatile approach enables schools to only contract for the implementation coaching support format and quantity they need, and relying upon the existing strengths of their staff and teaming structures to advance their behavior support systems. 

With this in mind, Cultivate Education partners with schools to supplement their school improvement efforts with a dedicated team of highly experienced implementation coaches. This way, schools do not have to go it alone in their improvement efforts; they can bring in our team of supplementary coaches to assist in their efforts, for as long as is needed to build capacity, and bring valuable perspective and considerations to help the school achieve and sustain their goals over the long term.