By now, the story has moved through several turning points.
Urgency helped people see why the current way of working was putting too much strain on adults and leaving gaps for students.
The guiding coalition pulled together a cross-role group of people with enough trust and influence to lead the work.
A clear vision and a focused set of initiatives answered the question, what are we trying to build in our MTSS and student support systems, and what major moves will take us there?
A volunteer army brought many more staff into the work through roles that felt like real opportunities rather than one more burden.
Removing obstacles focused on schedules, policies, forms, data tools, and norms that quietly blocked willing people from acting.
And short-term wins gave staff and leaders early evidence that the work was making a difference, in both the numbers and in how daily life felt.
This brings the series to Kotter’s seventh step: sustain acceleration. Kotter describes this step as pressing harder after first successes, using growing credibility to improve systems, structures, and policies, and continuing change after change until the vision becomes reality.
This step is often misunderstood.
It does not mean pushing faster at all costs.
It does not mean taking a few early wins as proof that everyone can now absorb three more initiatives.
And it does not mean running the same people harder because they were generous enough to help in the first place.
In schools, sustaining acceleration means something more disciplined.
It means using early wins as a launchpad rather than a finish line.
It means building on what is working, protecting the conditions that made it possible, and spreading the work in ways that grow coherence rather than chaos.
This matters because, after early wins, systems often drift toward one of three paths.
The first path is the finish-line path.
A district sees early gains, celebrates them, and quietly acts as though the main work is now done.
The second path is the background-noise path.
Some good things are happening, but no one uses them to shape decisions, calendars, budgets, or leadership behavior. The work continues in small pockets, but it never quite moves to the center.
The third path is the launchpad path.
Leaders see early wins as proof of concept. They ask what made those wins possible, what needs to be protected, what needs to be refined, and what is ready to spread next.
This episode is about that third path.
And because there is more than one way to walk it, the stories in this episode will move across multiple districts and multiple roles.
That matters because sustaining acceleration extends beyond the central office. It lives in district decisions, but also in the work of principals, deans, teachers, counselors, school psychologists, paraprofessionals, office staff, and others whose daily choices either strengthen the new system or allow old habits to slide back in.
Start with the finish-line path.
In one district, the first year of MTSS redesign goes better than expected.
A few pilot schools cut the time from first concern to support.
Repeated office visits drop for a small student cohort.
Several teachers report that meetings feel clearer and more useful.
At the end of the year, district leaders hold a celebration.
They share before-and-after graphs.
They thank the coalition.
They call the year a success.
And then attention shifts.
A new curriculum rollout moves to the center.
A different accountability pressure grows louder.
The coalition meets less often.
The protected blocks begin to get repurposed.
Older forms start to reappear.
By the middle of the next year, some of the previous gains are fading.
Teachers in the pilot schools say things like, we had something good going, but I am not sure what happened to it.
This is what it looks like to treat early wins as an ending.
The second path is quieter.
Another district also sees early wins.
Staff in some schools are beginning to feel a bit of relief.
But the central team never really names what the wins mean.
The coalition keeps meeting, but the work stays mostly inside that circle.
New pressures arrive: reporting requirements, outside partnerships, and competing initiatives.
It becomes one more item on the list.
A principal says, we are doing some good things, but I do not think anyone outside this school really sees it.
This is the background-noise path.
The wins are real, but they are not used.
The third path looks different.
In a third district, leaders decide that the first wins are not a finish line or background noise.
They are a launchpad.
After the first year, the superintendent brings together the guiding coalition, several principals, teacher leads, counselors, a school psychologist, a paraprofessional from a pilot school, and a family-facing staff member.
They begin with a practical question:
What exactly improved this year, and why?
They look at the data.
They look at the stories.
They ask where support became timelier, where repeated crises declined, where staff described their work as more coherent, and where the design still felt thin.
In one elementary school, a principal describes how a protected monthly MTSS block changed the way her team worked.
She explains that they used to squeeze student support conversations into the last few minutes of larger meetings.
Now they have a dedicated hour where grade-level leads, a counselor, a special educator, and a para sit together.
They use a clear problem-solving routine.
They leave with specific plans and named follow-up steps.
She says, I am not spending nearly as much time chasing down next steps because the team is doing that together.
A teacher adds, it used to feel like when I raised a concern, it went into a void. Now, by the next meeting, we have tried something, and I know who is doing what.
A district data specialist shares that, in this principal’s school, the time from first documented concern to initial Tier 2 support dropped from seven weeks to under three over the course of the year.
In a middle school, a counselor describes how the staff focused on a small group of students with repeated office visits.
They created consistent check-ins, coordinated plans, and a clearer pattern for who did what and when.
She says, I still see those students, but the tone of those conversations is different now. I am talking with them before the crisis, not only after it.
The dean adds that repeated removals for that group declined over the year and that staff in that wing have been able to stay in classrooms more consistently.
As the district leadership team listens, they make an important choice.
They do not treat these stories as nice examples to mention in a report.
They treat them as evidence.
The question becomes, what do these wins teach us about what should happen next?
That is the heart of sustaining acceleration.
It means turning wins into learning.
It means asking what parts of these pilots are core to the success and what parts can flex by context.
It means deciding what is ready to spread, what still needs to deepen, and what has to be protected if the gains are going to last.
This is where a helpful distinction emerges.
There is widening, and there is deepening.
Widening means taking a practice that worked in a few sites and bringing it to more schools.
Deepening means improving the quality, consistency, and reliability of the practice where it already exists.
Healthy systems do both.
If leaders only widen, they may spread a fragile version of the work before it is ready.
If they only deepen, they may trap the gains in a handful of pilot sites.
In the third district, the coalition works on both.
They identify a new set of schools that are ready to adopt the core process.
But they do not simply send those schools a packet and a timeline.
They pair each school with a pilot site.
A principal from a pilot school sits down with a principal from a new school.
They look at calendars, staffing patterns, and meeting structures.
They talk honestly about what made the protected block real.
They discuss where resistance showed up and what helped.
Teachers, counselors, and paras from pilot schools host short sessions with peers from new schools.
They share what worked, what was bumpy, and what they would change if they were starting again.
At the same time, the district keeps improving the original sites.
Teachers and support staff in pilot schools report that one part of the one-page MTSS flow is still confusing.
Follow-up on action items is better than it used to be, but still uneven in some teams.
The coalition responds by revising the flow and adding a simple follow-up protocol: who checks in, when, and how next steps are documented.
That is deepening.
The system is not only spreading the work.
It is improving the quality of the work as it spreads.
This is also the point in the change process where leaders have to manage energy, not only pace.
Healthy systems do not try to sprint forever.
They move in seasons.
There are seasons of push, where new practices are introduced or spread.
And there are seasons of consolidation, where the focus shifts to stabilization, refinement, and learning.
That rhythm matters in schools.
In another district, leaders notice that after an energetic first year, staff are tired.
The coalition could respond by announcing several new components of the support model all at once.
Instead, district leaders decide that the next semester will be a consolidation season.
The message is clear.
This semester, the focus is not on launching three more major changes.
It is on stabilizing the MTSS routines already in motion, deepening Tier 2 practice, and reducing confusion in how schools use support time.
That decision affects multiple roles.
Principals are told to protect the existing MTSS block rather than layering new meeting demands into it.
Teacher leaders are invited to refine grade-level problem-solving routines rather than take on a new initiative.
Counselors and psychologists are asked to help improve the quality of support planning rather than expand the number of programs at once.
Paras are given clearer communication pathways and a more stable role in transitions, rather than a constant churn of changing expectations.
Office staff are included in reviewing how student concerns move through the building so fewer messages get lost or delayed.
Acceleration, in this district, looks less like speed and more like coherence.
That is an important line to hold.
In schools, momentum should feel like growing alignment, not growing chaos.
There is also a leadership capacity dimension to this step.
If the work still depends on the same small group of champions after the first wins, it is fragile.
Sustaining acceleration means growing more people who can carry the work.
In one school, a teacher who helped pilot the new MTSS process becomes a building facilitator for grade-level teams.
In another, a counselor who helped design supports for a small student cohort joins the district design team.
In another, a para who became especially skilled at coordinating transition routines helps train colleagues in other buildings.
This is how a system becomes less dependent on a few key personalities.
It also matters when leaders leave.
If a principal moves to another district, if a central office leader changes roles, or if a coalition member steps back, the work does not have to collapse.
More people understand the purpose and the process.
That is one sign that acceleration is becoming durable.
There are several common traps to watch for when leaders try to sustain acceleration.
One is initiative stacking.
After early wins, the system may feel ready for more.
Leaders may think, we have momentum now, so this is the perfect time to add another major literacy effort, a new attendance campaign, and a different data platform.
But if those moves are not carefully aligned, staff experience them as additional layers, not as coherent next steps.
A second trap is leader over-reliance.
If the work still depends almost entirely on a few central leaders, a few principals, or the same teacher volunteers, it remains fragile.
A third trap is data fatigue.
In the name of monitoring progress, some systems flood staff with dashboards, reports, and progress indicators that no one has time to interpret together.
The numbers multiply, but meaning shrinks.
A fourth trap is balance drift.
Early wins may be concentrated in certain schools, student groups, or teams.
If leaders do not notice and address that pattern, some communities will quietly experience the change effort as something happening somewhere else.
And a fifth trap is narrative drift.
As time passes, people may forget the original urgency.
The work can start to feel optional, trendy, or linked only to the preferences of current leaders.
Countering these traps requires discipline.
When new initiatives appear, leaders can ask whether they align with the current vision or distract from it.
When the same people keep carrying the work, leaders can ask who else is ready to grow into leadership.
When data demands expand, leaders can ask which numbers actually help staff make better decisions and which are simply creating noise.
When progress appears uneven, leaders can ask where extra coaching, calendar support, or policy attention is needed.
And when the storyline starts to blur, leaders can return to the original why: this work exists because the previous way of supporting students and adults was too fragmented, too reactive, and too dependent on individual superheros.
To close this step in the change process, consider a few questions.
If your district saw two or three strong early wins this year, what would happen next?
Would those wins shape budget decisions, schedules, policies, and leadership behavior?
Or would they be celebrated and then left behind?
Which parts of your change work are ready to spread, and which still need to deepen before they widen?
If a key principal, counselor, or central office leader left tomorrow, what parts of the work would continue on their own?
And are you treating momentum as permission to pile on more, or as an opportunity to invest smarter in what is already working?
Kotter’s seventh step is not about endless speed. It is about continuing to press the work forward after the first successes by using growing credibility to improve systems, structures, and policies until the vision becomes real.
In public education, that means resisting both drift and overload.
It means building on what is working, protecting people’s capacity, and helping the system grow stronger in ways that more people can actually carry.
In the final episode, our focus will turn to instituting change.
Once the work has momentum, the next challenge is to make sure it lasts—so that these new ways of working become part of how the system operates, even when leaders change and attention shifts.
