Halfway through the academic year? Recalculate now.
The typical school year has 180 instructional days. Odds are, for most schools and districts, half of the 2025–2026 school year has already been completed. Over. Gone. Done. Bye-bye. But wait—didn’t we just start the year?!
Let’s say that today is the 91st day of school. How would you respond to the following prompt: Today is perfect timing for us to . . . ?
Having engaged many teams with a similar prompt in the past, the most common response is some form of reflection on what’s been done, learned, implemented, and initiated to date.
Reflection is a natural response at the midpoint of the year—it helps us name what we’ve tried and what we’ve learned. But reflection alone doesn’t change outcomes. At Day 91, awareness without adjustment keeps us on the same path.
When evidence shows students aren’t where they need to be, progress in the second half of the year depends on recalculating what we do next, not just recognizing where we’ve been.
How to use a map to rethink our path forward
As someone who travels often, I am highly dependent upon Google Maps, Waze, and Apple’s CarPlay. Consider these tools as models for reflecting on our current 180-day journey across the academic year. What is the first thing a directions app, like Google Maps, asks you?
Where are you going?
Before we can truly evaluate our progress, we must be crystal clear about our desired destination. Where did we want to be and by when? Are we 90 days closer to where we wanted to be on Day 180?
This line of inquiry aligns perfectly with the first critical question of a professional learning community (PLC): What do we want students to know and be able to do?
So the question we should be asking to drive our midyear reflection is: What should our students know and be able to do by the 91st day of school?
Now, what’s the second question a map app asks?
Where are you now?
With a clear picture of what students should be able to produce and demonstrate by Day 91 of the academic year, we can answer the next question: Which students are where they need to be right now—and which are not?
Now what?
What does the app provide after you input where you are going and where you are now?
- Multiple routes and options for you to choose from
- An estimated time of arrival for each of the various routes
Then, based on the information we have at the start of our journey, we select the route we believe will best help us accomplish our goal/arrive at our destination.
Why new data demands a better route
Here’s the point of the analogy. More often than not, once you select your route and begin your journey, a map app like Google Maps or Waze will continuously update and revise your ETA.
Why?
Road closures, speed traps, accidents, traffic, and construction. The app adapts to new information that’s been gathered since your departure—information that was unknown, unanticipated, or unavailable earlier.
Now think about attendance, weather, staff or leadership changes, increasing enrollment, etc. Like road closures and speed traps, new challenges unexpectedly confront your school or district all the time throughout any given academic year.
But while your map’s ETA constantly changes and new, alternative routes are often proposed, what never changes? What is the constant that drives the recalculations?
The destination
Teaching and learning are dramatically impacted by variables—student readiness, attendance, language, behavior, home life, etc. While the impact of these variables is undeniable and cannot be ignored, our ability to recalculate is dependent on having a constant amid so many variables. What’s our destination—our constant?
Essential skills and behaviors:
- Have to know
- Must know
- Can’t learn without
The app is always recalculating. It seeks more efficient routes, removes no longer viable routes, considers new options, and eliminates unnecessary paths by constantly evaluating progress toward the destination using the most current data available.
We’re midway through the academic year. This is the perfect time for us to do the same.
Watch the Are You Using the Correct Data to Move Students? free webinar recording to deepen your understanding of how to focus on meaningful data, avoid over-assessing, and turn insights into purposeful action for teaching and learning.
What we know now changes what we do next
We began our 180-day journey 90 days ago with great intentions and a plan for implementation. Decisions were made based on what we knew at the time, the information available, and the overall goals for the journey. On Day 91, however, we now have two things far more powerful than intentions: evidence and experience.
With 90 days behind us, we are empowered to answer questions that should inspire—and require—schools and teams to recalculate:
What do you know now that you didn’t know on Day 1?
About your students? About your school? About your team?
More specifically, do you know who is learning—and who is not learning?
For students who are learning, do you know who is consistently ready to learn and will continue to meet or exceed the target?
For students who are not learning, do you know why?
- Who is struggling due to excessive absenteeism?
- Who is impacted by extreme or intensive behaviors?
- Who lacks the foundational readiness skills they should have had on Day 1?
Facts, not feelings
Based on evidence and experience, can you predict who will possess the most essential skills and behaviors necessary to succeed at the start of the next academic year?
Based on that same evidence, can you predict who will begin next year lacking those essential skills and behaviors?
Secondary teams:
- Do you know the students who will pass your class?
- Do you know the students who will fail your class?
90/180: The future fraction
It is important to acknowledge that these difficult, honest, evidence-based predictions are being made with 90 days remaining in the school year. As the saying goes, if nothing changes, nothing changes.
The map app accepts and applies new information without ever abandoning the destination. Revised routes may be new, untried, more limited, or less scenic—but the app remains unwavering in its essential purpose: the destination. It never announces, “Sorry—due to unforeseeable barriers, you will not reach your destination.”
If it can be predicted, it can be prevented.
The takeaways: What we know and what to do next
Ninety days of evidence and experience empowers us to reflect on and recalculate our own practices. How have we invested our time, and what has been the return on our investments?
- Do we know which practices have been the most effective and impactful? How do we know?
- Do we know which practices have not produced the intended results? How do we know?
- For our students we predict will not be ready next academic year, what have we been offering them in terms of intervention, additional time, and support?
- How have we been answering PLC Question 3: How do we respond when students don’t learn?
Midyear reflections, team self-assessments, and progress monitoring through school improvement plans are sound and common practices. However, these often become annual compliance tasks, focused on documenting activities and submitting required artifacts. The objective becomes merely affirming that we did what we said we would do—or what we were told to do. Rarely does this produce meaningful, actionable recalculation: renewed commitments to what is absolutely essential, revised use of resources, or refined goals targeting specific students and skills.
The task is completed, and we go back to doing what we were doing. True recalculation requires a shift from Day 1 intentions (what we planned to do) to Day 91 evidence (what our students need us to do now).
The good news: We know
- We know our students by name and need.
- We know who is learning and who is not learning.
- We know what is working and what is not working.
We have all the evidence we need to be more targeted, purposeful, and disciplined with the limited time we have remaining—with our students and with each other.
Explore some of our other PLC blogs for practical strategies, evidence-based ideas, and actionable approaches to make collaboration and teaching more effective.
About the author
David LaRose is an education coach and presenter specializing in professional learning communities, response to intervention, leadership, and organizational culture. He is the former superintendent for Culver City Unified School District in California.
