Turnaround happens when the staff believes, together, that their actions will work and then gathers proof that they do. That’s the promise of the Impact Team Collaborative Inquiry model for Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) and Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools: it builds collective teacher efficacy (CTE) and supplies the evidence that sustains it. Impact Teams fuse human-centered design with disciplined inquiry so educators and students co-create learning, analyze results, and act with purpose; research on CTE shows these conditions correlate with meaningful gains in student learning (Donohoo, O’Leary, & Hattie, 2020; Donohoo, Hattie, & Eells, 2018).

 

The Five Sources of Collective Teacher Efficacy In Action

Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) thrives when schools create the right enabling conditions: a shared goal consensus that clarifies the “why” and keeps attention on what matters; empowered teachers who design and refine their own strategies through short, evidence-based cycles; and embedded reflective practices that make improvement a routine, not a one-off. Impact Teams operationalize these conditions by aligning student-owned goals with MTSS, co-constructing success criteria, and studying evidence in collaborative cycles. As cohesive teacher knowledge grows, instruction becomes more consistent and reliable for students without losing teacher autonomy. Ultimately, supportive leadership removes barriers, protects time, and amplifies impact, enabling teams to take risks, learn from their results, and sustain momentum.

Together, these interconnected conditions reduce noise, multiply effort, and create a culture where both teachers and students own the learning journey:

  1. Goal consensus: When the “why” is shared, attention stays on what matters.
    Impact Teams sharpen the PLC focus into student-owned language with students naming what they expect to learn, how they’ll know, and how they’ll adjust. Teams then align those questions with MTSS, ensuring that Tier 1 instruction is strong and Tier 2 and 3 supports are purposeful. PS 78 rallied around a throughline, What I Need Time (WIN), and used that litmus test to choose strategies and materials to ensure adequate tiered support. Shared goals reduce noise and multiply effort, which is why goal consensus is an enabling condition for CTE (Donohoo et al., 2020).
  2. Empowered teachers: When teachers lead the work, ownership follows.
    In Impact Teams, teachers don’t receive initiatives; they design them—framing puzzles of practice, co-constructing success criteria with students, and testing strategies in short, repeatable cycles (Donohoo et al., 2020). The Evidence–Analysis–Action (EAA) protocol structures that design work so teams examine evidence, analyze root causes, and act with intention. At PS 16 (NYC DOE), grade teams led clarity sprints in which teachers authored success criteria with students and then ran “Evidence Walks” to see those criteria in use. At Montebello School in the Los Angeles area, the teacher leads facilitated 6-8 week impact cycles across departments so the staff could compare what worked and scale it. When teachers design the work, they defend it and improve it, and that’s the engine of CTE. (Donohoo et al., 2020).
  3. Embedded reflective practices: When reflection is routine, improvement is inevitable.
    Impact Teams make reflection systematic rather than sporadic: teams use the EAA protocol to collect multiple forms of evidence (student work, classroom observations, perception data), analyze for patterns and equity, and plan actions they will test next—closing the loop with follow-up evidence (Bloomberg, Pitchford, & Wells, 2025). Dole Middle School in Honolulu centered inquiry on deliberate practice tied to priority standards; teachers reviewed student work together, named patterns, and tried one high-leverage move in every class before studying the impact. When reflective practice is baked into the week, not bolted onto it, practice improves and efficacy grows.
  4. Cohesive teacher knowledge: When we teach as one, students learn with clarity.
    CTE strengthens as teams build a shared understanding of how they teach—a common language for success criteria, feedback, and student self-assessment. Impact Teams make that coherence visible by co-constructing rubrics, exemplars, and checklists with students, then studying the same artifacts and talking about the same moves across classrooms. PS 16 adopted stoplight rubrics and symbols from their core curriculum’s anchor charts to ensure students had clear expectations; students could enter any classroom and recognize the focus. Consistency isn’t conformity; it’s reliability students can count on, and it elevates both clarity and transfer. (Donohoo et al., 2020).
  5. Supportive leadership: When leaders create safety and remove friction, teams take bigger swings. Leaders in TSI/CSI schools make time, protect attention, and broadcast evidence. Principals at PS 16 and Montebello scheduled protected blocks for EAA cycles, buffered teachers from initiative overload, and spotlighted student artifacts that showed growth. Dole’s leadership invested in student voice, using focus groups and student-led instructional rounds, to shape the next cycles, increasing teacher confidence that the work matched learner needs. CTE thrives when leaders turn proof into a shared story and shield teams, allowing them to keep iterating. (Donohoo et al., 2020).

How Impact Teams Fit TSI/CSI Realities

The Impact Team model matches the urgency and complexity of TSI/CSI work. TSI/CSI schools need a cadence fast enough to learn quickly and steady enough to stick. Impact Teams deliver that rhythm: short EAA cycles (often 3–4 weeks) with tight evidence routines, plus MTSS alignment so core instruction and targeted supports reinforce each other (Bloomberg et al., 2025). Because the process centers student voice and co-design, it surfaces street data alongside test data—equity is designed in, not added later. In short, the work is doable on Tuesday and defensible on Friday.

 

Celebrating Big Wins

→ Dole Middle School, Honolulu: Deliberate practice on what matters most.
Dole asked a powerful question, How do we amplify deliberate practice so students build expertise on our priority standards?, and answered it with consistent success-criteria work, common formative checks, and rapid feedback cycles. The big win is clarity: students and teachers now share the same picture of quality, so practice reps actually build expertise. That alignment turns more practice into better practice. (Bloomberg et al., 2025).

→ PS 16, NYC DOE: Clarity that students can name and use.
At PS 16, teams centered the day around student-facing goals and co-constructed criteria aligned to their core curriculum’s anchor charts. Self- and peer feedback routines provided students with language to evaluate their work and choose next steps, while teachers utilized evidence meetings to refine mini-lessons grounded in explicit instruction. The big win is agency: students don’t wait to be told what to do; they self-direct using the criteria they helped create. (Donohoo et al., 2020).

→ PS 78: Feedback that moves learning, not just papers.
PS 78 teams used Impact Team protocols to tighten the feedback loop for systematic phonics instruction using a structured literacy approach that is less “nice job,” more “next move.” With calibrated goals during WIN Time, students understood what they needed to practice to build expertise. The big win is acceleration: goal monitoring became routine, and students began transferring criteria from one unit to the next, shrinking the distance between first revision and final performance. (Donohoo, 2017).

→ Montebello School (Greater Los Angeles): MTSS that students actually own.
Montebello integrated Impact Teams with MTSS so Tier 1 clarity and Tier 2 and 3 supports spoke the same language. Students co-analyzed screener and classroom evidence, chose strategies, and tracked progress in 6-8 week cycles. The big win is coherence: intervention now amplifies, not competes with, core instruction, and students can tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing. (Bloomberg & Pitchford, 2023).

 

Why This Works—and Keeps Working

Proof builds belief; belief fuels persistence; persistence compounds results. Impact Teams grow CTE by giving educators repeated experiences of we chose, we tried, we learned, it worked. Over time, teams don’t just feel more efficacious; they become more efficacious because they can point to patterns of improvement they created together (Bandura, 1997; Donohoo et al., 2018; Edmondson, 1999; Stajkovic, Lee, & Nyberg, 2009). That virtuous cycle isn’t a luxury in TSI/CSI schools; it’s the lever that moves the system.

 

A Simple Invitation

We invite schools with TSI (Targeted Support and Improvement) and CSI (Comprehensive Support and Improvement) designations to join our school improvement team in a collaborative effort to maximize learner agency.

Every school begins from a unique starting point, with distinct strengths and challenges. That’s why our first step together will be a comprehensive needs analysis, a conversation and review process to understand your priorities, student needs, and current initiatives.

From there, we can identify high-leverage opportunities for growth and tailor an approach that aligns with your vision for student success. The goal is simple but powerful: empower your learners, strengthen instructional practices, and turn TSI/CSI designations into launchpads for innovation.

If you’re ready to explore how we can work together to make this happen, please reach out to begin the needs analysis process.

References (APA 7th)

  • Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
  • Bloomberg, P., & Pitchford, B. (2023). Leading impact teams: Building a culture of efficacy and agency. Mimi and Todd Press.
  • Bloomberg, P. J., Pitchford, B., & Wells, I. (2025). Elevating Collaborative Expertise: Advancing Agency Through the Impact Team Collaborative Inquiry Model (White paper). Mimi and Todd Press.
  • Donohoo, J. (2017). Collective teacher efficacy: The effect of beliefs on student achievement. Corwin.
  • Donohoo, J., Hattie, J., & Eells, R. (2018). The power of collective efficacy. Educational Leadership, 75(6), 40–44.
  • Donohoo, J., O’Leary, T., & Hattie, J. (2020). The design and validation of the enabling conditions for collective teacher efficacy scale (EC-CTES). Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 5(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-08-2019-0020
  • Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
  • Stajkovic, A. D., Lee, D., & Nyberg, A. J. (2009). Collective efficacy, group potency, and group performance: Meta-analyses of their relationships, and test of a mediation model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 814–828. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015659