Teacher Leadership Is More Than an Add-On. It’s the Engine That Drives Student Outcomes

By Dr. Quentina Timoll, Superintendent of University View Academy, Louisiana

In today’s ever-evolving educational landscape, one truth remains: A one-size-fits-all staffing model does not work. Every school is a unique ecosystem—shaped by its students, families, educators, leaders, community, challenges, and strengths. Yet, traditional staffing models too often follow rigid or cookie-cutter frameworks, failing to tap into the most powerful transformation levers: teacher leadership and strategic resource alignment.

To improve student outcomes, it’s time to shift mindsets from compliance-driven staffing to strategic staffing—a comprehensive approach that aligns people, time, and resources with student needs. Strategic staffing recognizes that different schools, grade levels, and student populations have unique needs that require tailored solutions. When done correctly, it naturally fosters opportunities for teachers to step into leadership roles, driving change directly where it matters most —the classroom —and it centers on equity. 

Teacher Leaders Drive Results

By implementing a strategic staffing framework, a school not only optimizes its human capital but also fundamentally shifts its culture. Teacher leadership is no longer an optional add-on; it is the engine that drives continuous improvement.

Strategic staffing ensures that:

1. Expertise is prioritized - the right teacher is in the right role at the right time.
2. Time is respected - core instruction and high-leverage collaborative structures are protected.
3. Leadership is developed - teachers are provided with structured, supported pathways to lead their peers and have a positive influence and impact.

Being intentional about who teaches what, when, and how they lead, creates a powerful synergy that translates directly into improved student outcomes—which is, after all, the ultimate goal.

Empowering teachers means giving them a voice in how and where their expertise is best utilized. Offering voice and choice in assignments, professional development pathways, and even school-level decision-making builds a strong foundation for multiple career pathways and a strong school culture and climate. Examples are:

• A teacher with a passion for content and course development can be staffed as an instructional content leader to help other teachers build their asynchronous content.
• An experienced teacher can serve as a teacher leader to mentor and coach new staff members. 

This autonomy is critical for developing leadership skills and retaining top talent, as it shows teachers their expertise is valued beyond their classroom walls.

It is important to honor educators' strengths, leadership aspirations, and lived experiences. When teachers are given opportunities to lead in coaching roles, as grade-level leads, or in developing school-wide initiatives, they bring invaluable insights to the table. These leadership pathways also drive retention, satisfaction, and innovation, creating a positive cycle of growth and improvement.

University View Academy (UVA) offers several teacher leader roles: 

• Instructional Coach (IC): a member of the Instructional Leadership Team, provides teacher coaching, conducts teacher observations and evaluations, and facilitates clusters.
• Teacher Leader (TL): participates in specific Instructional Leadership Team meetings, provides teacher coaching, conducts teacher observations, and facilitates professional learning communities. 
• Instructional Content Leader (ICL): participates in specific Instructional Leadership Team meetings, provides teacher content creation support, serves as a curriculum expert and liaisons with the instructional coach, facilitates grade-level or content-specific team meetings, supports teachers on growing instructional practices, and participates and can lead professional learning communities. 

Each teacher leader holds a 10-month teaching position and receives a stipend ranging from $2,500 - $6,500. Every teacher leader is responsible for leading professional development on various topics, attending cluster meetings and professional learning communities, and observing and providing feedback to teachers and each other. Every teacher leader role can serve as a substitute when a teacher is absent. These teacher leader roles and responsibilities support the instructional leaders by allowing them to focus on teaching and learning in the classroom through coordinated, calibrated, collaborative, and comprehensive observation and feedback cycles. Student and teacher actions, standards-aligned synchronous and asynchronous lessons, activities, and assessments are vetted and aligned with the Louisiana Educator Rubric. 

The Louisiana Educator Rubric was designed through a partnership between the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) and the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to support improvements in classroom instruction directly. This rubric serves as the foundation for all feedback to ensure that teachers feel supported and receive streamlined feedback even though they may receive coaching from a variety of roles. These teacher leaders' roles also support UVA’s team-based and distributive staffing model.

Staffing Models Equate to Student Growth

The team-based and the distributive staffing model is defined by its intentional deployment of talent to maximize instructional quality.   Teacher roles are aligned based on their talents and strengths and as a result, educators are more energized by their work rather than draining themselves to do what they struggle to learn. These strategic staffing models suggest that collaborative, team-based models are effective levers aligned with student growth. 

Instead of one teacher managing everything individually, such as building course content, facilitating synchronous live sessions, developing teachlets and videos for asynchronous courses, and managing student feedback, an integrated team of content grade-specific teachers collectively instructs a larger roster of students. This approach allows:

• Impact on Students - this design allows for true differentiation. Content expert teachers can deliver core instruction to a large group, while other teachers facilitate small groups, skill-based instruction,  targeted intervention, or enrichment. This ensures every minute of teaching and learning is optimized.
• Teacher Leadership Connection - it provides novice educators with vital on-the-job mentorship from a skilled veteran, enhancing new teacher effectiveness and retention. It also provides the opportunity for more experienced teachers to hone complex management and coaching skills, formalizing their role as leaders.

No single educator can—or should—do it all. The distributive staffing model breaks away from the idea that one teacher must meet all the needs of all students, all the time. Instead, roles are diversified, and expertise is strategically distributed. At UVA, this looks like: 

• Instructional coaches support planning and facilitating professional learning.
• Teacher leaders model lessons, facilitating professional learning on specific high-quality instructional materials, and supporting data collection and analysis by subject or grade level.
• Instructional content leaders review content, support content creation, facilitate professional development on instructional technology or tech tools and resources, and assist with tiered or differentiated support.

Both approaches leverage team-based teaching, promote collaboration, and ensure students' needs are met through a coordinated network of adult support, not siloed individuals. 

Instructional Minutes Prioritized and Protected 

At the heart of strategic staffing is the intentional protection of core instructional time. This time represents the most powerful opportunity to impact student learning. When staffing decisions are made, they must ensure that every student, especially those furthest from opportunity, has access to strong, uninterrupted instruction from skilled educators during core content blocks. This means avoiding the common trap of pulling students or teachers during these critical times for meetings, interventions, or coverage. Strategic staffing ensures that schedules are built around core time, not the other way around. It also means that Instructional Leadership team members are conducting observations and providing feedback during core instructional time and not meeting with each other. Teacher leaders can play a crucial role here by designing schedules and advocating for resources that shield their colleagues' instructional time from unnecessary administrative or non-academic tasks. This focus validates the teacher's primary role and expertise while leveraging their voices as decision influencers. 

Equity at the Center of Strategic Staffing

At its core, strategic staffing is not about moving pieces around a schedule. It’s about committing to educational equity by ensuring that every student has access to the right adult, at the right time, doing the right work. It’s about elevating teacher leadership as a critical lever in that mission.

Strategic staffing is about using time and staff better, not more of either or both. Strategic staffing strategies will increase your school’s commitment to providing students with equitable access to engaging and rigorous teaching and learning experiences.

Strategic staffing is a mindset shift. It invites us to think more boldly about how we organize people and resources to meet the complex demands of today’s classrooms.

School and district leaders must be willing to:

• Prioritize teacher leadership as a lever for improvement. 
• Align roles and structures to rigorous academic standards.
• Build meaningful, supported career pathways for educators.

By doing so, we don’t just fill positions—we build systems that honor the expertise of teachers, meet the needs of every student, and move us closer to the promise of educational equity.

Now is the time to act. Strategic staffing is not just best practice—it’s a moral imperative. By abandoning the myth of “one-size-fits-all,” positions, we build systems that support growth, innovation, and student success.