Making Room for Impact

Dial back and make room for impact

With teacher and leader workloads and burnout at an all-time high, it’s time for de-implementation: de-prioritizing and deleting the less effective, higher-cost initiatives we implement in schools. De-implementation allows us to focus on practices that have more supporting evidence and a higher probability of positive impact on students, and at the same time gain much-needed work-life balance.

In Making Room for Impact, the internationally respected education experts and authors provide a clear four-stage process for winnowing down teaching and learning to high-effect practices. Informed by the latest research in learning, education, healthcare, and psychology, each step and tool is designed to move educators through the hard parts of letting go. Inside, you’ll find:

• Research that tells us the process of schooling is often over-engineered and that gives us permission to dial back, carefully


• A step-by-step process for deciding which initiatives are most effective—and how to let go of the ones that are not


• Useful tools, templates, and charts that educators can immediately use in their de-implementation work—at school, in teaching teams, or at the system level

It’s time to get our lives back—without harming student learning. If we can collectively learn to let go and understand how to identify which initiatives are worthwhile, we’ll have more time for what truly matters.