FCInsights – Florida Charter Institute

Leading for Learning: The Power of Studying Student Work

May 21, 2026 No Comments

By Paul Powell and Kathryn Perkins We are preparing for our fourth annual Instructional Leadership Institute, coming up this June, so we’ve been thinking about great coaching a lot lately. And while we’ve written extensively about elements that go into effective coaching (how to coach at the beginning of the year, how to practice effectively…), we’ve had something of a revelation in the past year: If the goal of great coaching is to develop teachers to grow student achievement, coaching shouldn’t involve just any action steps – it should revolve around those that set great teachers apart. What do the best teachers do that others don’t do, or don’t do as well? And from there, how can we coach our teachers to strengthen those practices? This train of thought led us to rename our institute “Leading for Learning: The Power of Studying Student Work.” Thousands of hours observing master teachers has led us to the understanding that great teachers are constantly studying what their students know and don’t know and responding accordingly…so great coaches should develop teachers in the mindset and skills needed for constant responsiveness. In “Leading for Learning,” we hope to provide development in exactly that. First, we’ll

Do we need an aligned vision of exemplary instruction?

March 19, 2026 No Comments

By Paul Powell and Kathryn Perkins Earlier this month, I was one of the nearly 125 million people who tuned into the Super Bowl. Though I consider myself a sports fan, football isn’t an area of particular interest for me – typically, the Super Bowl is my three-hour foray into the sport for the year. Still, as the night unfolded, I came to a somewhat surprising realization: despite the limited time I’ve spent immersed in the sport, I am somewhat proficient in watching and talking about it. Take passing, for instance. I recognize that a successful throw begins with a perpendicular stance to your target and one’s fingers on the laces. That you open your body forward as you throw to create some rotation and the desired “spiral” shape to the football. That your back foot pivots up onto its ball as the pass is released. While I’m confident any expert would tell me there’s much more to it, that’s a decent level of knowledge and technical detail. And, based on my level of expertise in the sport, if I know this much, it’s reasonable to assume the vast majority of the American public does as well. This made the

Another Notch in the Belt for Retrieval

December 18, 2025 No Comments

By Paul Powell and Kathryn Perkins A few months back, we wrote about the value of regular, systematic retrieval practice in the math classroom. The headline: retrieval is essential for learning. Without repeated, spaced at bats with interleaved information that lead to the sweet spot of “desirable difficulty,” there is no transfer from working to long-term memory, and therefore, no learning. While the power of retrieval to encode new information is already well known, a new study piqued our interest this week as it offered a new – and powerful – benefit of retrieval practice. In “Effects of retrieval practice on retention and application of complex educational concepts,” Daniel Corral and Shana Carpenter studied how retrieval impacts not just memorization, but the ability to apply learned information to new situations (“transfer”). They found that retrieval benefits both. Carl Hendrick summed it up beautifully: The key finding was that three rounds of retrieval practice produced significantly better performance than restudy and quiz study on both repeated questions (testing the same material) and application questions (requiring learners to apply concepts to novel scenarios) when tested one week later. Importantly, this transfer advantage persisted even when controlling for memory accuracy, suggesting retrieval enhances

The Science of Math: What does cognitive science tell us about learning math?

November 14, 2025 No Comments

By: Paul Powell and Kathryn Perkins Earlier this month, we hosted a new workshop for our team titled “The Science of Math.” This represents an area of increasing importance, not just close to home here in Florida. Nationally, the most recent NAEP assessment, considered “our nation’s report card, showed alarming trends in math, including a continued lack of post-COVID recovery (though the downward trend began well before) and the greatest declines for students already performing in the bottom quartile. As written earlier this year: “The country’s lowest-scoring students are in free fall.” As such, we’ve been thinking a lot about math lately, pondering the questions: What does cognitive science tell us about learning math? And how can we make these takeaways applicable and actionable at the school and classroom level? In an earlier blog on the topic, we focused on the power of retrieval practice; this month, we’ll shift to introducing new material effectively. Explore or Explicit? Researchers have often posed the question of whether to introduce new material via student exploration or direct instruction, and the research is confusing, with multiple studies in each camp citing positive effects of the approach. The Research While both approaches can add value

Creating Learning Teams

October 10, 2025 No Comments

The theme of our newsletter this month is creating learning teams – and it is my favorite yet! At the beginning of my teaching career, I was overwhelmed by all I needed to learn to be great for my students. However, because I was fortunate enough to work at a school and network that truly valued, prioritized, and invested in my growth, I was motivated and inspired by the challenge. It’s what hooked me into teaching and what kept me there, and I believe all teachers deserve the same experience. FCI Educate exists to create opportunities for professional learning that will improve student learning, be accessible, and help teachers feel valued and invested in. We have some fantastic offerings coming up that will do all of that. For more, read on below – we hope you will join us and can’t wait to see you there! ___________________________________________________________ November 3 Science of Reading and Science of Math The transition out of “beginning-of-year” mode offers the perfect moment for educators to deep dive into content and instructional practice, ensuring a year of transformational learning. Join FCI as we host Teach Like a Champion for a workshop on the science of reading, while

From Foundations of Management to Monitor the Learning: Instructional Coaching in September and Beyond

September 10, 2025 No Comments

Last month, we featured beginning-of-year instructional coaching practices to kickstart student achievement. We know, though, that strong classroom management is a necessary but insufficient ingredient for student learning. So once classroom foundations are set, how do you shift to coaching with student learning at the forefront? We propose that you Monitor the Learning. The Monitor the Learning framework for instructional coaching operates around the student work analysis cycle. As an instructional coach, you: …and repeat the cycle! The premise is simple: great coaching should drive student learning. By centering student work in the coaching cycle, we guarantee that it does. Creating the Conditions As we collectively approach the 25-26 school year’s one month mark, it’s time to begin the shift from beginning of year instructional coaching to Monitoring the Learning, and there are key steps to create the conditions for success in this work. For one, school leaders need to determine which work is the highest priority for analysis. Depending on your school structures, levels of curricular and assessment alignment, and coaching aptitude, there are two approaches: keeping your cycles predictable and systematized, or keeping them flexible. For schools in which curriculum and assessment are aligned and shared, or where