Praxis 6990 Instructional Leadership Concepts: The Foundation
Defining the Instructional Leader's Role
Within the SLLA instructional leadership framework, the principal is no longer viewed as a remote administrator but as the "leader of learners." This role necessitates a shift from transactional leadership—focused on schedules and compliance—to transformational leadership that centers on the instructional core. On the Praxis 6990, this is often assessed through scenarios involving the Instructional Core, which consists of the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content. A leader's primary lever for improvement is increasing the level of knowledge and skill of the teacher, the level of complexity of the content, or the level of active engagement of the student. Candidates must recognize that any school improvement initiative failing to address one of these three components is unlikely to yield significant gains in student achievement. Scoring high on these items requires identifying the principal's responsibility in protecting instructional time and ensuring that every organizational decision is filtered through its potential impact on classroom learning.
Models of Instructional Leadership
The exam frequently references specific theoretical approaches to leadership, such as Distributed Leadership and Instructional Coaching models. Distributed leadership moves away from the "heroic principal" myth, instead focusing on building the capacity of teacher leaders, department heads, and instructional coaches to share the burden of pedagogical improvement. In the context of the SLLA, you will encounter questions regarding the delegation of authority versus the delegation of tasks. While a principal can delegate the facilitation of a data meeting to a grade-level lead, they remain ultimately accountable for the outcomes. Another key concept is the Hallinger Model, which emphasizes three dimensions: defining the school mission, managing the instructional program, and promoting a positive school learning climate. When responding to constructed-response questions, applying these models demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how leadership structures influence the collective efficacy of the teaching staff.
Curriculum Development, Alignment, and Implementation
Standards-Based Curriculum Design
A central tened of curriculum development school leader responsibilities is ensuring vertical and horizontal alignment. Vertical alignment ensures that the curriculum flows logically from one grade level to the next (e.g., 4th-grade fractions concepts providing the prerequisite skills for 5th-grade decimal operations), while horizontal alignment ensures that all teachers within a specific grade level are teaching the same standards to the same level of rigor. The SLLA tests your ability to identify "curriculum drift," where teachers may favor favorite units over mandated standards. Candidates should be familiar with the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework, or "backward design," which begins with identifying desired results (standards), determining acceptable evidence (assessment), and then planning learning experiences and instruction. On the exam, look for distractors that suggest buying a new program is the solution; the correct answer usually involves aligning existing resources to the rigor of state-mandated standards.
Leading Curriculum Mapping and Review Processes
Curriculum mapping is a continuous process of documenting what is actually taught, when it is taught, and how it is assessed. As an instructional leader, you must facilitate a Curriculum Audit to identify gaps, redundancies, and misalignments with high-stakes assessments. The Praxis 6990 evaluates your ability to lead a committee through this process without creating a culture of defensiveness. This involves using a Gap Analysis to compare the "written curriculum" (the formal documents) with the "taught curriculum" (what happens in the classroom) and the "tested curriculum" (what is measured on assessments). Effective leadership here involves providing teachers with the time and protocols necessary to deconstruct standards into specific learning targets. You must demonstrate an understanding of how to use pacing guides not as rigid scripts, but as flexible tools that ensure all students receive equitable access to the full scope of the required curriculum before summative evaluations occur.
Supervising and Evaluating Instruction
Clinical Supervision and Observation Cycles
The SLLA places heavy emphasis on the Clinical Supervision Model, which is designed to improve instruction through a non-evaluative, collaborative cycle. This cycle typically includes a pre-observation conference, the observation itself, an analysis of the data collected, and a post-observation conference. During the pre-observation, the leader and teacher agree on a specific focus, such as the frequency of student questioning or the transition time between activities. In the post-observation, the leader uses Cognitive Coaching techniques—asking open-ended questions to lead the teacher to their own insights—rather than simply providing a list of critiques. For the exam, distinguish between this developmental process and formal evaluation. While formal evaluation is for accountability, clinical supervision is for professional growth. Questions often ask for the most effective first step in supporting a struggling teacher; the answer almost always involves a collaborative observation and goal-setting session.
Evidence-Based Teacher Evaluation Frameworks
Understanding teacher evaluation models Praxis expectations involves familiarity with standardized rubrics, such as the Danielson Framework for Teaching or the Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model. These frameworks categorize teaching into domains such as Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. The SLLA expects leaders to distinguish between subjective opinions and objective evidence. For example, instead of noting "the teacher has good classroom management," a leader should record "100% of students were on task during the 15-minute independent reading block." The exam may present a scenario where a teacher challenges an evaluation; the leader’s defense must always be rooted in documented evidence tied directly to the rubric’s descriptors. You must also understand the legal requirements of the Professional Improvement Plan (PIP) or Intensive Assistance phase, which provides a structured timeline and specific resources for a teacher who fails to meet the minimum standards of performance.
Providing Actionable Feedback for Growth
Feedback is only effective if it is specific, timely, and actionable. In the context of instructional leadership, this means moving away from "sandwich feedback" (a compliment, a critique, and a compliment) toward a more rigorous, evidence-based approach. The SLLA tests your ability to identify high-leverage feedback. For instance, telling a teacher to "improve engagement" is too broad; a high-leverage suggestion would be to "incorporate a Think-Pair-Share strategy during the direct instruction phase to increase student talk time." Effective feedback should be tied to the Zone of Proximal Development for the teacher—challenging enough to prompt growth but not so overwhelming that it causes shutdown. When analyzing scenarios on the exam, look for feedback options that are grounded in observed student behaviors rather than the teacher's personality or style.
Facilitating Professional Growth and Development
Designing Effective Professional Learning
Professional development (PD) on the SLLA is framed as a long-term, job-embedded process rather than a series of disconnected workshops. To score well, you must recognize the characteristics of effective PD: it is sustained, collaborative, content-focused, and modeled. The exam often asks how a leader should determine the focus of PD; the correct approach is a Needs Assessment that triangulates student achievement data, teacher observation trends, and school-wide goals. Leaders must also understand Andragogy (adult learning theory), which posits that adults are most motivated to learn when the content is immediately applicable to their daily work and allows for self-directed inquiry. If a scenario asks how to address a new school-wide literacy initiative, the best answer will involve providing ongoing coaching and classroom-based support rather than a single day of training at the start of the year.
Structuring and Sustaining Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
Questions regarding professional learning communities PLC structures focus on the four critical questions of a PLC: What do we want students to learn? How will we know if they learned it? How will we respond when some students do not learn it? And how will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? On the SLLA, a PLC is not just a grade-level meeting; it is a collaborative culture characterized by a Collective Responsibility for student success. Leaders facilitate this by providing common planning time and establishing norms for looking at student work. You may be tested on how to handle a dysfunctional PLC. In these cases, the leader’s role is to re-center the group on student data and provide protocols—such as the Tuning Protocol—to ensure that conversations remain professional, data-driven, and focused on instructional improvement rather than administrative complaints.
Mentoring and Coaching Teachers
While mentoring is often a long-term relationship focused on the overall induction of a new teacher, instructional coaching is a targeted, short-term intervention focused on specific pedagogical skills. The SLLA expects you to understand the Coaching Cycle: identify a goal, learn a new strategy, and improve through practice. A key concept here is the Peer Observation model, where the leader facilitates opportunities for teachers to observe one another. This reduces the isolation of teaching and spreads best practices throughout the building. When a scenario involves a veteran teacher resistant to change, the most effective leadership strategy is often to pair them with a peer coach or to involve them in a Lesson Study group, where the focus is on the lesson's impact on students rather than the teacher's individual performance. This shifts the focus from "critique" to "collaborative inquiry."
Leveraging Assessment and Data for School Improvement
Instructional leaders must ensure a balanced assessment system. Formative assessment is "for" learning—it occurs during the instructional process to provide immediate feedback and allow for mid-course corrections. Examples include exit tickets, whiteboards, and checks for understanding. Summative assessment is "of" learning—it occurs at the end of a unit or year to determine if the student met the criteria. The SLLA tests your ability to help teachers use formative data to differentiate instruction. A common exam scenario involves a teacher who discovers through a formative quiz that half the class does not understand a concept. The leader’s role is to support the teacher in Flexible Grouping, where the teacher provides targeted re-teaching to the struggling group while the other students engage in enrichment. Understanding the Reliability and Validity of assessments is also crucial; an assessment is only useful if it consistently measures what it is intended to measure.
Analyzing School-Wide and Disaggregated Data
Data-driven instruction leadership requires the ability to look beyond aggregate test scores to find the stories within the numbers. This involves disaggregating data by subgroups, such as Students with Disabilities (SWD), English Language Learners (ELL), and socio-economic status. The SLLA will ask you to identify achievement gaps by comparing the performance of these subgroups against the general population. You must be familiar with Value-Added Measures (VAM) or student growth percentiles, which measure how much progress a student has made relative to their peers with similar starting scores, rather than just their absolute score. When presented with a data set on the exam, look for patterns of inequity. If the school-wide math scores are high but the scores for Hispanic students are declining, the instructional leader must lead the staff in an investigation of the Opportunity Gap and the cultural relevance of the curriculum.
Leading Data-Driven Decision-Making Teams
Effective data leadership involves the creation of a Data Team or School Improvement Team (SIT). This team is responsible for the Root Cause Analysis—the process of digging deep into data to find the underlying reason for a problem rather than just treating the symptoms. For example, if reading scores are low, the root cause might not be "poor reading instruction" but rather "high chronic absenteeism" or "lack of phonics alignment in K-2." The SLLA evaluates your ability to lead these teams through the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. Leaders must ensure that data is not used to punish teachers but to empower them. This involves creating a "data-rich, soul-safe" environment where teachers feel comfortable being transparent about their students' struggles. On the exam, the correct response to a data problem usually involves a collaborative process of identifying a hypothesis, implementing a strategy, and then returning to the data to check for effectiveness.
Differentiated Instruction and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
To ensure all students have access to the curriculum, instructional leaders must promote Differentiated Instruction, which involves tailoring the content, process, or product based on a student's readiness, interest, or learning profile. This is closely related to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework that aims to remove barriers to learning by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression. On the SLLA, you may encounter questions about the Response to Intervention (RTI) or Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. Tier 1 is high-quality core instruction for all; Tier 2 involves targeted small-group interventions; and Tier 3 involves intensive, individualized support. As a leader, you must ensure that Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions are supplemental to, not a replacement for, core instruction. The goal is always to keep the student in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) while providing necessary scaffolds.
Culturally Responsive Teaching Pedagogy
Instructional leadership also encompasses the promotion of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT). This pedagogy recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning. The SLLA tests your ability to identify and mitigate Implicit Bias within the curriculum and instructional practices. Leaders must facilitate a "curriculum audit for equity," ensuring that the materials used in the classroom serve as both "windows" into other cultures and "mirrors" reflecting the students' own identities. This also involves addressing the Disproportionality in disciplinary referrals or placement in advanced placement (AP) courses. In an exam scenario, if a particular demographic is overrepresented in special education, the instructional leader must lead a review of the referral process and the cultural competency of the assessment tools being used. Promoting equity is not just a moral imperative; it is a core component of the instructional leadership standards tested on the 6990.