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Texas Strategic Leadership

Logo for Texas Strategic Leadership featuring a gear, knight chess piece, and star.

Texas Strategic Leadership (TSL) enhances district leadership by providing superintendents and their teams with customized coaching and cohort-based experiences. Grounded in the Effective District Framework, TSL focuses on strategic planning and system alignment to drive student success.

By ensuring a rigorous, supportive student experience through aligned campus-level and district-level systems, the program empowers leaders to implement high-impact strategies for sustained improvement.

FOCUS & IMPACT

  • Keep the main thing the main thing.

    Superintendents encounter a whirlwind of competing priorities and pressures. TSL helps maintain focus on delivering a high-quality student experience.

  • Best-in-class consultative support.

    Superintendents and their top leaders receive dedicated consulting hours from a highly qualified Executive Advisor and Performance Management & Data Specialist from their local ESC to help build and deliver on a data-driven strategic plan.

  • Elevate your leadership approach.

    Superintendents receive dedicated one-on-one coaching time from their Executive Advisor to hone skills in driving and managing change across stakeholders.

  • Get your team rowing in a unified direction.

    Superintendents and their top leaders engage in structured workshops and strategic planning activities, moving toward a vision with one voice.

  • Statewide exposure and access.

    Superintendents tap a statewide network of district leaders, content experts on a range of topics (e.g., curriculum, operations, talent), and exemplars, with ready access to TEA.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

As Year 1 of a multi-year commitment, the Texas Strategic Leadership (TSL) process begins with an extensive review of the district’s current state.

The TSL team will

  • conduct an academic review
  • collect assessment and other relevant district data
  • perform campus walkthroughs
  • distribute stakeholder surveys.

A comprehensive landscape analysis will be completed, with results presented to the Steering Committee to help inform the development of student outcome goals.

Combining the landscape analysis with a deep dive into the Effective District Framework (EDF) helps further identify district priorities and initiatives. Once those initiatives are defined, a measurement and implementation plan will be developed.

This process produces several key documents, including

  • Strategy-on-a-Page
  • three-year strategic outline
  • measurement plan
  • implementation plan

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

In Year 2 of the Texas Strategic Leadership (TSL) process—following the strategic planning year—districts shift focus to implementing and monitoring their plans through a structured performance management process.

This begins with developing a clear performance management vision and framework aligned to the district’s student outcome goals.

Using the measurement and implementation plan created in Year 1, the districts will regularly gather data using identified tools, including quarterly campus walkthroughs, BOY, MOY, and EOY screeners, and other pre-established metrics.

These data points help track progress toward goals, allowing district leaders to identify areas for improvement and make timely adjustments to the implementation plan. This ongoing cycle of review and refinement ensures the district stays on track to achieve its desired outcomes.

BUILD YOUR OWN

Not ready to commit to TSL? No problem—we offer flexible solutions and can create a custom plan just for your district.

  • Student Outcome Goal Revision
  • Structured Stakeholder Surveys
  • Landscape Analysis
  • Strategy on a Page
  • 3-Year Initiative Outline
  • Strategic Effective District Framework (EDF) Deep Dive
  • Performance Management Matrix
  • Progress Monitoring Routines
  • Custom Measurement & Implementation Plan w/ Progress Monitoring Dashboard
  • Student Experience Statements
  • Portrait of a Graduate
  • Portrait of an Educator
  • Portrait of a Leader
  • Logistical Support (Data Inventory, Calendar Alignment, Assessment Calendar Alignment, Measurement Matrix)
  • 1:1 Executive Coaching for superintendents & district leadership
  • Structured leadership development workshops for central office teams
  • School Board Connections
  • Theory of Action
  • Systems Alignment
  • Roles & Responsibilities
  • Experience Exemplar Practices & Models in ESC 3 & across the State
  • Mindset & Culture Training
  • Deliver coaching & training using Jon Gordon’s frameworks for building positive, high-performing teams

THE REVIEWS ARE IN...