Skill, Will, or System? A Better Question for School Improvement

Two years ago, I posted a short video on TikTok about barriers to success in schools.

At the time, I talked about skill. About knowledge. About motivation. The things we often point to when instruction isn’t landing or initiatives don’t stick.

If I recorded that video today, I’d add something I didn’t name clearly enough back then: resources.

Not just materials.
Time. Staffing. Capacity.
And just as importantly, how effectively we’re using the people and structures we already have.

That shift didn’t come from theory. It came from experience, years of watching well-intended initiatives stall, and being asked to step in after the fact to “fix” what hadn’t been designed to last.

I Was Often Asked to Fix Things

I spent many years as an instructional coach being asked to fix things.

Sometimes it was framed as fixing instruction. Sometimes it was fixing implementation. And sometimes—more quietly—it felt like fixing people. You know the ones. The teachers whose classrooms became shorthand for “the problem.” The ones coaches were sent to support, often in isolation, as if the issue lived in a single room rather than in the system that shaped it.

More often than not, I was brought in when initiatives weren’t working as a kind of Hail Mary. A last move after frustration had already taken root. At some schools I worked at rarely were instructional coaches positioned as part of the original design of an initiative, or as part of a plan for sustained support once the rollout began.

Coaching, instead of being a core lever for improvement, became a reaction to disappointment.

When Initiatives Become Moments Instead of Plans

At the same time, I watched initiatives stack up.

One-size-fits-all professional development sessions delivered early in the year. Big ideas introduced with urgency. Expectations set with confidence. And then, almost immediately, leaders looking for evidence that the work was already showing up in classrooms the following week.

What was missing was follow-up.

There was no protected time to plan how the strategies would actually be used. No structured opportunity to revisit the learning. No ongoing training to help teachers translate ideas into practice. The expectation was immediate implementation, but the support stopped at the end of the PD session.

Nothing had been removed to make room for this new focus. No roles had been adjusted. No time had been protected.

This wasn’t an isolated moment. It was a pattern.

The Training Landed. The Support Didn’t.

One example still stands out clearly.

A school leader had spent weeks planning a beautifully designed professional development session on foundational reading skills for K–5 teachers. The training was thoughtful, interactive, and genuinely well received. Teachers leaned in. The strategies made sense. There was real energy in the room.

During the session, the leader referenced materials teachers could use and mentioned a website where those resources lived. She encouraged teachers to explore it. Then the school year moved on.

There was no follow-up training.
No dedicated planning time to adapt the strategies.
No structured support to help teachers figure out what implementation should look like in their classrooms.

A few weeks later, frustration surfaced.

During classroom observations, the strategies weren’t showing up the way the leader had hoped. Teachers weren’t implementing what had been shared. The disappointment was real and understandable. From her perspective, the learning had happened. The expectation had been set when she encouraged them to explore the instructional strategies she demonstrated. Why wasn’t it transferring?

What wasn’t immediately visible was that the resource website mentioned in the training wasn’t being used.

Not because teachers didn’t care.
Not because they were resistant.

The materials lived somewhere “out there,” disconnected from daily planning routines, buried under emails, competing initiatives, and the constant press of time. What had felt clear during the PD became fuzzy in practice.

Without follow-up support, the learning faded faster than anyone expected.

This Is Where the System Quietly Failed the Work

What made this moment especially striking was everything the school already had in place.

There were instructional coaches.
There were biweekly PLCs.
There were existing structures that could have supported teachers in returning to those strategies, practicing them together, and planning how to use them meaningfully.

But none of it had been intentionally connected.

The PD had been a moment, not a plan.

And this is where school improvement efforts so often break down, not because leaders don’t care or teachers aren’t trying, but because the wrong question gets asked after the training ends.

Instead of asking, Why aren’t they doing this?
A better question would have been: Is this a skill issue, a will issue, or a system issue?

In this case, it wasn’t will. Teachers weren’t unmotivated or disengaged.
It wasn’t belief. They hadn’t rejected the importance of foundational reading skills.

It was a system issue.

The system assumed that exposure would lead to implementation. That a single PD session could substitute for ongoing learning. That mentioning a resource was the same as making it usable. And that teachers could figure out the “how” on their own, on top of everything else they were already managing.

When Resources Mean More Than Materials

This is where my thinking has shifted the most.

When we talk about resources in schools, we often mean materials or funding. But just as often, the real constraint is capacity: time to plan, space to practice, and roles designed to support learning over time.

Instructional coaches are a clear example.

Rather than being embedded as part of initiative rollout and ongoing support, coaches were often deployed reactively, sent in once something wasn’t working, or assigned to “problem” teachers as a corrective measure.

In other moments, coaching work disappeared altogether. Coaches covered classes. Assisted administrators. Coordinated and ran testing—WIDA, MAP, SBAC—sometimes multiple times a year, sometimes back-to-back across fall, winter, and spring.

Important work, yes.
But work that steadily eroded the very purpose of the role.

The issue wasn’t staffing alone. It was how staffing was being used.

What Could Have Been Different Wasn’t Complicated

Looking back, what strikes me most is how preventable much of this was.

That school leader didn’t need another initiative. She needed a system that could carry the one she had already chosen.

Follow-up training could have been built into the year. PLCs could have been intentionally focused on foundational reading skills, giving teachers time to plan, practice, and reflect together. Instructional coaches could have been positioned as partners supporting all teachers with implementation, not just stepping in once frustration surfaced.

The materials could have been made impossible to miss and pulled into daily workflows instead of left as a reference. The original PD could have become the starting point for a yearlong arc of learning, not a one-and-done event.

None of this would have required more effort from teachers.

It would have required clearer design from the system.

A Better Question Changes the Work

This is the cost of misdiagnosis.

When system issues are treated like motivation problems, leaders grow frustrated. When skill gaps are treated like compliance issues, teachers feel scrutinized. And when PD is treated as an event instead of a process, the work never has a chance to take root.

Resistance, in many cases, isn’t defiance.
It’s data.

As we step into a new year, before adding anything new, it’s worth asking:

Is this a skill issue, a will issue, or a system issue?

Because when leaders get the diagnosis right, the response doesn’t have to be heavier.

It becomes clearer.
More intentional.
And far more likely to last.