We took as our guiding principle the perspective of Richard Elmore, professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education: "You don't change performance without changing the instructional core. The relationship of the teacher and the students in the presence of content must be at the center of efforts to improve performance.” We wanted to impact that “instructional core.” And, after interviewing education stakeholders in Washington State and nationally, we began to see an opportunity:

• More and more schools have leadership teams, but many teams lack the tools and guidance to effectively promote quality instruction.
• In schools without strong leadership teams, teachers often find themselves working in isolation.
• There's a shortage of effective and scalable methodologies that provide structured materials to support teams and teachers in implementing quality instruction.

Success at the Core was born when we decided to focus our project on leadership and teacher development. In fall 2008, award-winning filmmaker Woody Creek Productions joined our team and began to capture the work of leadership teams and teachers in six Washington State middle schools. We selected these schools because of their diversity in geographic location, school size, and student population and because they offered us access to the efforts—in real time—of leadership teams and teachers working to improve instruction. In 2008/2009, we developed an extensive set of print and online resources to accompany the videos.

Selected middle schools in Washington State piloted the materials during the 2009/2010 school year, with an independent evaluation of the pilot by Inverness Research. Reactions were hugely positive and, as a result, we are rolling Success at the Core out across Washington State during the 2010/2011 school year. Plans have also begun for a national roll-out in 2011.