Teachers have always set goals both for their students and their own practice. What has changed is how central goal-setting has become to professional learning. In many districts today, growth-oriented evaluation systems require teachers to articulate goals at least once a year, often with real consequences attached.
The challenge is not whether teachers should set goals. It is about ensuring those goals are meaningful—grounded in student learning, connected to instructional practice, and supported by leaders in ways that build trust and clarity, rather than compliance.
At the Center for Educational Leadership, we use the term area of focus to describe what a teacher chooses to work on in their instructional practice based on students’ learning strengths and challenges, in relation to their teaching. When done well, it becomes a bridge between what students need and how adults respond.
For example, a fifth-grade teacher might notice that many students struggle to structure explanatory writing. Rather than naming a vague goal, the teacher identifies a focused area of work: strengthening students’ writing structure by improving their ability to model their own thinking about structure as a writer during whole-class mini-lessons, providing targeted small-group instruction, and using published example texts to analyze different organizational approaches. The goal is clear, actionable, and explicitly tied to instructional moves.
In practice, this clarity does not come easily. Teachers sometimes set goals before they truly know their students, relying on last year’s data or generic expectations. Others identify worthwhile student goals and separate teaching goals without articulating how changes in instruction are meant to drive changes in student learning.
Through our work with schools and districts, we have found that identifying a strong area of focus is most effective when teachers and leaders engage in a shared process. That process typically includes four steps:
- Teachers formatively assess their students to understand learning strengths and challenges.
- Leaders articulate district and building goals, and teachers ground their thinking in these goals.
- Teachers and leaders articulate a focused goal that names both the student learning outcome and the instructional practices that will support it.
- Leaders assess instructional practice–paying close attention to how students, particularly those often least engaged–using a research-based framework.
This process takes time and intentional leadership. But when teachers are supported through PLCs, well-designed professional learning, and thoughtful one-on-one inquiry-based conversations, goal setting becomes less about compliance and more about learning. Over time, it helps school communities build a shared habit: approaching challenges in student learning collectively, with curiosity, coherence, and purpose.
