Here’s a statistic that blew my socks off recently. According to a 2025 analysis by the Learning Policy Institute, roughly 1 in 8 teaching positions across the United States is either unfilled or filled by someone not fully certified for the role. That’s over 411,000 positions and growing.
The scale of that number is staggering, and its implications for schools and students are immense. What began as a stopgap solution seems to have become a design feature of the system. There are plenty of reasons this has happened, including low pay, difficult working conditions, and certification barriers, but the result is the same.
In medicine, in law, and in most licensed professions, what we’re describing would be illegal. In education, especially in schools serving students with the greatest needs, it has become business as usual. Schools with the highest concentrations of students of color are four times as likely to employ an uncertified teacher (Cardichon et al, 2020). Rural districts face overlapping disadvantages that make the shortage even harder to solve (Ingersoll & Tran, 2023).
None of this is a criticism of the people stepping into these roles. They are showing up, doing hard work, and I’m grateful for every one of them. But if we’re asking people to walk into classrooms without full preparation, we owe them something real in return. Not a one-day training. Not a binder. Actual, ongoing support so no teacher has to figure it out alone.
How might we address the challenge?
The research on teacher development is remarkably consistent. Teachers improve faster, stay longer, and feel more effective when they have access to meaningful mentorship and coaching. Particularly in the early years, educators need opportunities to think alongside someone more experienced, someone who is also trained in adult learning and coaching, who can listen, model, problem-solve, and support growth (Booker & Russell, 2022).
While one-on-one coaching can certainly be powerful, it can also be difficult and expensive to sustain at scale in schools already stretched thin. It may also miss opportunities for the kind of collaborative learning that helps teachers expand their thinking. A new teacher struggling with classroom management, for example, may benefit enormously from hearing how several colleagues approach the same challenge in different ways.
Which brings me to the power of cluster coaching. Whether you are a novice teacher or an experienced educator, cluster coaching can broaden your perspective, deepen your understanding, and, perhaps most critically, build an authentic learning community.
So What Is Cluster Coaching, Exactly?
Think of it as structured, collaborative learning for a small group of teachers, facilitated by a coach or teacher leader, all working toward a shared goal. It has three parts, and they build on each other.
- First, the group meets for a pre-observation conversation. The “host” teacher, whose classroom the group will visit, shares lesson plans, goals for the lesson, and the thinking behind them.
- Then the group observes the lesson together, each person tracking what they notice, including teaching moves and the language being used by the teacher and students.
- After the lesson, everyone comes back together to debrief. They share what they saw, ask questions, and reflect. They think together about what the lesson revealed, and what each person can take back to their own classroom. (Fountas & Pinnell, 2025)
What Does It Looks Like in Practice?
Recently, I observed a cluster coaching cycle with a small group of teachers with mixed roles and experience, working to better support two students struggling with literacy.
During their debrief, no one handed them a protocol or a process for conversation. They talked. They shared what they noticed. And they began to think about how they could work differently together on behalf all the students they jointly serve.
Through their dialogue, the teachers realized their current ways of communicating across interventions and classrooms were not working. Just as quickly, they developed a better approach right there in the room. There was no script and no directive, just a group of educators identifying a problem together and developing a solution. They saw a problem, talked it through, and came up with a better approach. It was the kind of change that sticks, in part because it is not imposed, but rather built by the people doing the work.
What Does It Take to Make It Work?
Cluster coaching can be incredibly powerful, but it does not happen automatically. It depends on a few key conditions and investments.
Effective facilitation. A skilled facilitator knows when to ask a question, when to help group members clarify their thinking, and when to step back. It takes knowledge, practice, and restraint.
A coalition of the willing. Being observed by peers can make one feel vulnerable. Talking honestly about teaching is even harder. Teachers need to feel safe enough to take risks, ask questions, and admit when something is not working. That kind of openness cannot be forced, but it can grow over time when schools start with people who are genuinely interested in learning together.
Protected time. At minimum, there is a pre-observation conversation, the observation itself, and a meaningful debrief. Together, that is three to four hours across a series of days. Creating that time requires real support from school leadership, including scheduling flexibility, substitute coverage, and protected meeting time during the school day.
Shared direction. Groups need a shared goal worth investigating. Without one, sessions can drift into pleasant but unfocused conversation. The focus does not need to be rigid, but it does need to be clear.
Trust. This includes trust among teachers, the facilitator, and school leadership. Trust makes honesty possible, and honesty makes the learning real.
So What Now?
Cluster coaching will not fix teacher shortages or solve deeper structural issues in how we recruit, pay, and support educators. But it can be a practical and powerful way to help teachers learn from one another, especially novice teachers who are still building confidence and experience in the classroom.
When I watched that group work together, I did not just see a professional development model. I saw a community forming in real time. I saw people who felt less alone, more capable, and more connected to each other and to their students.
Isn’t that what we’re trying to build?
To learn more about cluster coaching and other ways to support educators as a an instructional or literacy coach, join us in August for our four-day institute, The Effective Instructional Coach: Leading Growth, Navigating Challenges. Or consider enrolling in our online graduate literacy coaching & teacher leadership certificate.
Citations
Booker, L. N., & Russell, J. L. (2022). Design Principles for Improving Teaching Practice with Instructional Coaching. Design Principles Brief# 20: Teacher Preparation and Professional Learning. EdResearch for Action.
Cardichon, J., Darling-Hammond, L., Yang, M., Scott, C., Shields, P. M., & Burns, D. (2020). Inequitable opportunity to learn: Student access to certified and experienced teachers. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2025). Your literacy coaching playbook: What to know, say, and do. Heinemann.
Ingersoll, R. M., & Tran, H. (2023). The rural teacher shortage. Phi Delta Kappan, 105(3), 36-41.
Learning Policy Institute. (2025). Teacher Shortages by Subjects Across States [Fact sheet]. Retrieved at Teacher Shortages by Subjects Across States | Learning Policy Institute
