By Elizabeth Rangel
At the July 7 and 8, 2026, Institute for Learning (IFL) convening: "Getting Smarter Together: Using Improvement Science to Strengthen Middle School Literacy," 25 school and district leaders from the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and the School District (SD) of the City of York, came together to share professional successes from the past year related to instructional improvement efforts and to identify challenges for the future.
Background: Beginning with the 2025-2026 school year, in collaboration with educational non-profit TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project), the IFL, the practice arm of the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh, spearheaded work to strengthen student performance in 5th - 8th grade literacy. This partnership focuses on integrating student-centered practices in the classroom, which position students as active meaning-makers engaging deeply with complex texts through reasoning, discussion, and writing.
Originally funded with a one-million dollar grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2025 for Year One, the IFL has just received another one-million dollar grant from the Hewlett Foundation to continue the project for another year.
IFL Fellows, led by Sara DeMartino and Cheryl Sandora, work on-site and online to support teachers collaborating as a network to analyze data to understand each district's literacy problem of practice, learning about effective instructional change rooted in student-centered practices, and sharing adapted classroom practice to further seed promising instruction. In addition, the IFL and TNTP run leadership meetings for school principals learning to function as instructional leaders and learning to support network improvement. The initiative establishes cross-school networks to facilitate the sharing of best practices and resources related to student-centered instruction. The networks support teachers and principals to adapt high-quality instructional materials to incorporate student-centered practices.
Community: The project leverages the power of Networked Improvement Communities (NICs), in which network participants use improvement science methods to develop, test, refine, and share promising instructional practices.
For many participants, being able to compare notes and share approaches with colleagues contributes to a newfound sense of communal responsibility. As Ann Fillmore, Executive Director of K-12 Literacy, Pittsburgh Publish Schools (PPS) observed, "You are accountable to your students and to your school, but you are also accountable to the learning community of other instructional leaders that are in the network."
In the SD of the City of York, principals and coaches participated in monthly Zoom calls focused on aligning leadership's vision for effective literacy instruction with that of the vision being built by network teachers. Kate Fritz, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, SD of York City, noted, "It is very powerful to have principals on the calls. It sends a message to everyone that they (the principals) are prioritizing support for the community of instructional leaders."
PPS Assistant Superintendent Monica Lamar noted "We can't do this work alone. We have a community of great school leaders and great teachers that contribute to its success."
Collaboration: Participants compare notes and share approaches, successes, and challenges. When they come together as a group, as they did in July, they share their expertise with their own colleagues and their peers in the other district.
In the SD of York City, social studies teachers were invited to share their use of the practices with the literacy network. Fritz noted that the social studies teachers created another informal cross-content collaboration as well.
"What's really remarkable is that we have people from different schools within a single district collaborating; we have two districts collaborating; and we have two educational organizations collaborating - it's really rare to have that happen. This is now a living network with people collaborating within and now across their districts," reflected Tony Petrosky, Director of IFL and a University of Pittsburgh School of Education faculty member.
Culture Shift: The primary goal is to build internal, district-owned expertise grounded in a culture of change so that the positive changes last well beyond the pilot period and spread beyond members of the network. This represents a cultural shift in the larger world of school-based professional learning, in which one-off professional development (PD) sessions are the norm with mixed expectations for implementation or follow-up learning. For the IFL and TNTP, the work is about more than professional development; it's about building a sustainable system for improvement in three areas.
- For Teachers and Leaders: Educators are connected monthly to share successful lessons, review student data, and collaborate on future lessons. Principals also participate in monthly sessions to deepen their understanding of the challenges teachers face and support meaningful instructional change in their schools. This work is supported by the district's Curriculum & Instruction department and Office of School Performance.
- For Students: The work contributes to students achieving more equitable literacy outcomes through instruction that centers student-to-student meaning-making. This means that students are supported to work independently and in collaboration with each other to discuss text-based ideas in response to high-level questions, developing knowledge and skills that can be applied across reading and writing lessons.
- For the District: The primary goal is to build internal, district-owned expertise aligned to the network's vision for improvement so that the positive changes last well beyond the pilot period and can be spread across classrooms and schools.
Challenges Ahead: For the SD of the City of York, one of the biggest challenges is creating a systemwide prioritization of instruction using SCPs with the framework of their new, recently adopted middle-school curriculum, Amplify. The York professionals also hope to identify and provide regular job-embedded learning opportunities during the day for teachers and leaders, creating opportunities for network teachers and principals to observe the use of student-centered practices in each other's classrooms. At PPS, a plan approved by the School Board in May, 2026, will close a number of school buildings and reconfigure the district's entire footprint over the next few years. Navigating the closure of schools that are involved in the literacy initiative will be a challenge for the PPS teachers.
Helping students in schools in Pennsylvania is really just the beginning. The IFL, in collaboration with TNTP, has written a national playbook to support instructional leaders in their work to improve schooling. Currently in beta format, "Network-Centered Improvement: A District Leader's Playbook for Cross-School Collaboration," offers a practical roadmap to help districts implement impactful, cost-effective Network Improvement Communities and develop leader capacity to sustain positive instructional results across the country.
For the IFL and TNTP, this work is also about supporting districts to build a sustainable system for improvement. The goal for Year 2 is to further build district capacity to support and lead network meetings. The goal for Year 3 is to scale up and spread the work to the entire districts, not only the schools involved. "We want every student to experience classrooms where their thinking and voices are central to the learning. Because of the expertise already built across both districts, teachers and leaders will be well-poised to champion this work together and sustain it over time," said IFL Executive Director Angela Allie.
The Institute for Learning earned another $1 million from the Hewlett Foundation. Read the details in the July 23, 2026, issue of Pittwire.
Interested in bringing this approach to your district? Contact the IFL to learn how we can partner with your schools to build sustainable, student-centered systems for instructional improvement.