How School Leaders Can Use a Rapid Cycle of Inquiry to Improve Math Instruction—Fast
Published: July 11, 2025
School and district administrators are under constant pressure to raise math scores, implement effective instruction, and support educators—all without overwhelming their instructional teams or overhauling everything at once.
What if they could do it smarter, not harder?
Enter the Rapid Cycle of Inquiry—a focused, iterative leadership strategy that helps test, refine, and scale improvements in real time. When applied to math instruction, it can be a game-changer for driving evidence-based growth across classrooms.
What Is a Rapid Cycle of Inquiry?
A Rapid Cycle of Inquiry (RCI) is a structured, short-term process that allows school and district leaders to identify a problem, test a small solution, collect data, and adapt quickly. It’s a strategy rooted in continuous improvement, and it can bring clarity and focus to your math leadership work.
RCI typically follows four phases:
- Identify a problem of practice (This could be teacher or student-centered.)
- Design a targeted intervention or strategy
- Implement on a small scale
- Reflect & Adjust based on real-time data
Unlike year-long initiatives that may stall or drift, RCI allows leaders to act quickly, learn from early results, and build momentum—especially in areas like math where improvement can often feel slow or disconnected.
Why Apply RCI to Math?
Math presents a unique leadership challenge:
- Many K–8 educators are not math specialists.
- Instructional quality and student outcomes vary widely from classroom to classroom.
- Professional development and curriculum decisions may be disconnected from classroom realities.
A Rapid Cycle of Inquiry flips that model by engaging educators using real student data, and refines supports based on what’s actually working.
Real-World Application: A Sample RCI in Math
An example of implementing a Rapid Cycle of Inquiry might look something like this: your middle school math data shows low student engagement and underperformance in problem-solving. You want to affect change in this area, so what do you do?
Here’s how an RCI might look:
1. Identify
Problem: Students aren’t engaging in productive struggle during multi-step math tasks.
Root Cause Hypothesis: Teachers are unsure how to support student discourse and productive struggle without stepping in too soon or watering down the mathematical content.
2. Design
Strategy: Introduce a simple math discourse routine (e.g., “Turn and Talk with Sentence Starters”) in Grades 6–8.
Support: A math coach or an All Learners Network (ALN) facilitator will provide a short professional development session around the components of effective math discourse routines for middle school students. They would model the instructional strategy using ALN’s High Leverage Concepts-aligned routines.
3. Implement
Timeline: Implement the routine in 3 classrooms for 2 weeks, supported by a math coach or an ALN facilitator.
Collect: Observation notes focused on student engagement and mathematical discourse between students, short teacher reflections, and samples of student dialogue.
4. Reflect & Adjust
What happened? Did students engage more in mathematical discourse with peers? Were teachers more confident in facilitating discussion? What challenges occurred?
Based on findings, you might:
- Adjust the prompts for clarity
- Offer additional coaching support
- Expand to more classrooms
By including classroom teachers in the process, the reflections and adjustments have more impact by informing next actionable steps. The result is a collaborative teacher-tested approach—and you've built trust by collaborating, not mandating.
How Administrators Can Lead the RCI Process
To lead effectively through RCI, administrators must:
✅ Make data visible and actionable – Use classroom observations, assessments, and teacher input to define a clear focus.
✅ Start small, then scale – Test strategies in a few classrooms or grades before expanding district-wide.
✅ Keep cycles short – 2 to 6 weeks is ideal for implementation and reflection.
✅ Create a feedback loop – Regular check-ins, reflection protocols, and celebrations help sustain momentum.
✅ Empower educator voice – Teachers are more invested when they’re part of the design and learning process and see positive student outcomes.
RCI Meets Equity
Rapid Cycles of Inquiry are not just about efficiency—they’re about equity. When you focus deeply on one issue at a time, test what works, and adjust based on diverse student needs, you create a school culture that’s responsive, not reactive.
And when you align this approach with inclusive, evidence-based frameworks—like All Learners Network’s High Leverage Concepts (HLCs)—you give your team clear, high-impact instructional targets that are both rigorous and accessible.
Ready to Start Your First Cycle?
Here’s a simple entry point:
- Meet with your math team.
- Review recent data (benchmark assessments, walkthroughs, student work).
- Identify one challenge to address this month.
- Commit to trying one small change.
- Gather feedback, then revise and repeat.
Small, focused change—backed by evidence and teacher insight—is how transformation begins.
Want a Partner in This Process?
All Learners Network offers coaching and consulting to help districts implement Rapid Cycles of Inquiry aligned with high-quality math instruction and inclusive practices. Learn how you can bring All Learners Network into your school or district for embedded professional development.
