Raising the Floor or Lowering the Ceiling: Challenges to Instructional Leadership at Scale

Abstract

In an effort to scale success, many schools codify various practices to replicate them across schools. While such codification and replication can help scale success, scaling success often comes with numerous negative externalities such as a reduction of autonomy and burdens on successful educators. Based on real events and educators, this case follows an instructional coach through his career at a charter school as it attempts to scale a successful small charter school to a larger Charter Management Organization (CMO).