In 2009, I was wrapping up my semester-long student teaching experience in mathematics at Ewing High School in New Jersey and was about to start my professional career filling in for a teacher on maternity leave in another district. To me, there was no more important work than what teachers could accomplish with students in classrooms. I was young, eager, and hungry for someone to show me exactly how to be an excellent educator; to give me the roadmap, the playbook, the recipe I could follow to ensure success for me and, more importantly, for my students.
Since then, I have worked in the classroom, as a school leader, and in a district central office and have realized that the complex work of ensuring success for every student can never be boiled down to a single recipe. There are many sources we can draw on for inspiration with compelling evidence of promising ideas. But, the pursuit of excellence is highly context specific, and always requires perseverance, iteration, and time.
A few months after starting at Barr in 2022, I found myself on a site visit in western Massachusetts with the Holyoke Public Schools to learn more about our partnership with them through the Strengthening School Leadership initiative launched in 2019. Working with Relay Graduate School of Education, Holyoke had set a three-year plan in motion to strengthen school leadership structures tailored to their district context. As I spoke to leaders, I heard the pride they felt in the progress made so far and their longing to see that translate more clearly to student success. I sensed that there was something happening in Holyoke we might learn from.
Last May, the Barr Education team expanded the initiative, inviting five new districts to join the 2025 cohort and launch their own journeys of school leadership transformation. At our annual Fall Convening facilitated by Attuned Education Partners, the new district leaders had the opportunity to read and engage with a case study of Holyoke Public Schools’ first three years of strategic implementation under the initiative. “Betting on School Leadership in the Paper City” captures a district’s ambitious effort to drive instructional change, not through individual interventions but instead by targeting the enabling conditions for improving instruction, such as:
- Developing a shared vision for rigorous, equitable instruction and how leaders could support it
- Integrating expert training and coaching for leaders at the district central office, school, and classroom levels
- Prioritizing school leadership practices like observations, coaching, and collaborative lesson planning, all grounded in common tools and data
The case presents an honest view that pursuing change at the root is rarely linear and never simple. It closes at the end of the 2023-24 school year with school and district leaders feeling confident that they significantly strengthened the systems and structures needed to drive improvements in instruction, but without consistently clear evidence that shifts in those enabling conditions were translating to the desired improvements in measurable student learning.
For the new district leaders of the 2025 cohort, having the opportunity to read and engage with the Holyoke case study at the outset of their own transformation journeys was powerful.
In an effort to capture and share insights from other “districts next door,” Barr has broadened its research and evaluation agenda for the Strengthening School Leadership initiative through partnership with MDRC.
We will continue to share as we learn through the initiative. For now, we are excited to make the Holyoke case study public, along with this reading guide, to support any district looking to reflect on their own efforts to drive change and improve instruction. If you use the case, we would love to know and hear your feedback.
In 2025, one year removed from the end of this case, the Holyoke Public Schools celebrated the clearest signs yet of system-wide academic improvement, the highest teacher retention rate in over a decade, and the end of state receivership with a return to local control.
While the Strengthening School Leadership initiative within the Holyoke Public Schools has only been one part of their story of change, leaders in the district continue to believe that this effort aided their progress. We will continue to follow and share the story in Holyoke and the inspiring work of other grantees in the years to come.
Betting on School Leadership in the Paper City
