In our 2024 Principal Role Clarity paper, we surfaced a challenge facing school systems nationwide: school leaders are expected to drive improvement without a shared understanding of what strong instructional leadership looks like in practice—or who, exactly, is responsible for providing it.
To address this challenge, school system leaders need clearer examples and guidance for how instructional leadership can be intentionally defined, distributed, and supported across schools.
We studied four high-performing systems to map how they provide clear expectations for leaders and coherent support for teachers—and partnered with a district to test a process for building that clarity from the ground up.
On Tuesday, February 17 at 3:00 p.m. ET, we’re hosting a webinar to share our findings and discuss what it takes to implement clear and effective principal-led instructional leadership across a school system.
During this webinar, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Learn practical actions school system leaders can take to define expectations, align support, and sustain instructional leadership.
- Gain insights into how high-performing school systems define and organize instructional leadership activities.
- Ask us questions about instructional leadership challenges.
About the hosts
Eugene Pinkard
President
Eugene Pinkard began his education career as a teacher—first in rural South Africa, then in Washington, DC. During his time at DC Public Schools, he also served as a principal, principal supervisor, and cabinet member. Most recently, Pinkard has spent five years as director of K–12 leadership at the Aspen Institute Education & Society Program, leading a team that supports education leaders across the nation and develops resources and guidance for the sector. Pinkard manages the internal work of the organization, ensuring partnerships with schools, school systems, and states are strong; research and development goals are met; and staff are supported and empowered.
Emily Freitag
CEO
Before co-founding Instruction Partners, Emily Freitag was the assistant commissioner of curriculum and instruction for the Tennessee Department of Education. In this role, she oversaw K–12 core academics including standards, assessment design, instructional materials, and educator training and support. She led a collaborative effort to train more than 65,000 teachers and leaders during this time in a peer-led, content-based approach, and Tennessee saw increases in student achievement on both the NAEP and state tests. For five years before coming to Tennessee, Freitag managed Teach For America’s DC and Connecticut regions. She fell in love with education teaching 7th-grade math in Louisiana.
Laken Detchemendy
Senior Director, Custom Strategy
Laken Detchemendy brings deep expertise in instructional improvement with a strong track record of helping LEAs design and implement coherent K–12 initiatives that strengthen teaching and learning. She has led large-scale curriculum and instructional improvement efforts focused on ensuring materials, professional learning, and leadership practices are evidence-based and built for sustained impact. She designs professional learning that builds the capacity of instructional leaders and teachers to translate instructional priorities into consistent, high-quality classroom practice. Her work centers on partnering with leaders to create clear structures, roles, and routines that improve instruction across schools.