The Invisible Problem Keeping Districts From Improving Instruction At Scale

After 27 years of trying everything, one superintendent finally cracked the code on changing instruction.

Lance Hatch had a problem he couldn't see—and neither could his 700 teachers.

As Superintendent of Iron County School District in Utah, Lance had spent 27 years as an educator trying to improve classroom instruction. He'd trained thousands of teachers. He'd implemented professional learning communities. He'd studied the research from Harvard's DataWise project and Rick DuFour's work.

But teachers were flying blind. They couldn't see themselves teach.

The veteran teacher who thought he was facilitating rich discussions? He had no idea students weren't talking. A teacher working on student engagement? She couldn't measure whether her strategies were actually working. Without being able to see their own practice, teachers were left guessing—and even the best professional development couldn't overcome that fundamental invisibility.

Iron County had built a sophisticated "growth cycle" where schools analyzed data across four key areas—language arts, math, behavior, and instruction—to set annual SMART goals. But while they had robust data for math and literacy, instruction remained invisible.

"I've always felt that this is the weakest part of the growth cycle, and it's just because we don't have good data," Lance explains. Instructional coaches would visit a few classrooms, ask three students questions like "What are you learning?" and compile observations. "Very, very weak."

Without objective data, teachers couldn't reflect on their practice. Coaches couldn't scale their support. And district leaders couldn't see what was actually happening in classrooms—until everything changed.

"I saw, for the first time, hope"

Everything changed when Lance saw data from Escalante Valley Elementary, a school in his district that piloted TeachFX. For the first time, he could see concrete metrics on classroom discourse: student talk time, question types, wait time, and positive reinforcement—across multiple classrooms, objectively measured.

Before rolling it out district-wide, Lance tested it himself. He was scheduled to teach a lesson on the Constitution's preamble to every 5th grade classroom in the district—11 lessons total. He recorded each one with TeachFX.

Lance had tried other approaches to analyze teaching—videotaping lessons, manually tallying responses, tracking wait time. "But that labor-intensive process is not sustainable."

"TeachFX actually changes what happens in the classroom"

Now that the data is visible, principals had seen the possibilities and instruction was changing. Every school in Iron County aligned their instructional SMART goals with metrics they could track through TeachFX—student talk time, questioning patterns, wait time.

Then came the real test: implementation across 20 schools and over 500 teachers.

"I've never seen anything like it. It is universally accepted. It is loved."

The difference? Teachers own their data. "If it was me trying to tell them that they need to improve student talk time in their classroom, they would push back. But if they're reflecting—that's the beauty. I'm not telling them anything, their principal's not telling them anything. They're reflecting. And they're choosing to share their data with each other."

"From the guy who is skeptical about everything to the champion"

Lance's favorite story is about a veteran teacher who'd "done the same thing for 30 years." He tried TeachFX once—just to check a box and get administrators off his back.

Then he looked at the data. The amount of student talk was alarmingly low.

"He had no idea that the students absolutely were not talking. It was him doing all the talking," Lance recounts. The teacher started making changes. "He ended up recording every lesson—not just once a day or once a week, but every single class period, because he wanted the data."

He went from the teacher who was skeptical about everything to TeachFX's biggest champion.

"Our teaching is better"

For instructional coaches, TeachFX has shifted their work from data collection to meaningful conversations. "Before, they couldn't even have that conversation about getting more student talk, because they didn't know that student talk was low. The only way they would know is if they went in and sat for hours and hours and took data."

Early results are promising. One elementary school reported classes that started the year at 35% proficiency and reached 78% proficiency by mid-year. Lance is careful to note that other interventions—like structured intervention programs—also contributed. "But our teaching is better. The amount of questions is better, the praise is better."

Perhaps most tellingly, requests for traditional professional development have dropped. "We typically have groups of teachers who want to go to this conference or that conference," Lance says. "We're seeing hardly any come in at this point. They are focused on their own growth, and they feel the improvement."

The bottom line

Lance believes the ROI on TeachFX is significantly higher than on traditional professional development. 

After 27 years of trying every approach to improve instruction, Lance has found what works. "This is different. This actually changes what happens in the classroom. Sometimes from one lesson to another. Definitely from day to day."