For years, school leaders were told to pilot a new program before rolling it out. Dr. VanDerHeyden now calls that bad advice, and she admits she used to give it herself. Most pilots aren’t real tests. A program goes into one classroom, or a few willing teachers try it, and nobody looks closely at the data. Meanwhile, the teachers who need the most support wait one, two or even three years to get it. Whole groups of students move through the system without better instruction. Her message for leaders: don’t pilot. Scale. If a program doesn’t have enough evidence to adopt with confidence, a small pilot won’t fill that gap.
Watch the video to learn more.