Effective school leaders provide time to pilot, reflect on, and refine new ideas; they create systematic, iterative processes to design, implement, and evaluate innovation to improve teaching and learning. By allocating time, effort, and other resources to innovation in education, school leaders create conditions necessary for staff members to engage in a cyclical process of continuous improvement that provides timely solutions to priority needs. When school leaders establish routines for addressing innovation from the point of inception to the point of implementation and evaluation, they take teaching and learning to a new level of excellence, accelerating student growth.

These leaders also set up team time to plan, grade, and review student work to guide the school improvement process. Through this commitment, school leaders create conditions necessary for staff members to develop a greater understanding of standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessments that lead to student success. Through this collaborative review cycle, school leaders promote curriculum alignment within and across grade levels to achieve a common understanding among teachers and contribute to the collective growth of students across multiple dimensions. By establishing systems for planning, grading, and review of student work, school leaders afford teachers a strategic way of engaging in structured, collegial goal setting with future actions in mind.