I’ve spent most of my career in teacher and executive leader search, and if there’s one pattern I see over and over again in K–12 hiring, it’s this: we hire people for what they say, not for what they do.
I call it the SAY-DO gap. And it’s one of the biggest reasons schools and districts end up with teachers and leaders who look great on paper but struggle in practice.
The “SAY” Side
Think about how we evaluate candidates in education today. A resume lands on your desk. What do you see? Job titles. Degree credentials. The names of districts or schools where someone worked. Maybe a list of accomplishments written in the language of ed-speak: “led a turnaround initiative,” “implemented a multi-tiered support system,” “championed equity-centered practices.”
All of that is say. It’s a narrative. It tells you where someone has been and how they describe what happened while they were there. But it doesn’t tell you what they actually contributed, how they performed under pressure, or whether the results they’re claiming were really theirs.
A degree from a respected university says someone completed a program. It doesn’t say whether they can walk into a building with low morale and shift the culture. A title like “Assistant Superintendent of Learning” says someone held a role. It doesn’t say whether instruction actually improved on their watch.
And yet, these are the signals we’ve relied on for decades. We scan resumes for keywords. We look for name-brand districts. We check the credential box. Then we bring candidates in for an interview, where we ask them to—once again—tell us what they can do.
The “DO” Side
The DO side is different. It’s evidence. It’s demonstrated performance. It’s not “I led a turnaround”—it’s showing the data, walking through the decisions, and explaining what actually happened when things got hard.
The DO side asks: Can you show me? Not in a rehearsed answer to an interview question, but in real evidence of how you think, lead, and solve problems.
There’s a world of difference between a candidate who says “I’m data-driven” and one who can walk you through how they used assessment results to redesign a master schedule—and what happened next. One is a talking point. The other is proof.
Why the Gap Persists
Education hiring has been slow to change for a few reasons.
First, we’re comfortable with the traditional signals. Degrees, certifications, and years of experience are easy to verify and easy to compare. They feel objective. But they’re proxies at best—and misleading at worst.
Second, interviews reward good communicators, not necessarily good educators. The candidate who gives the smoothest answer in a 30-minute panel isn’t always the one who performs best in the role. We’ve all seen this play out: the charismatic hire who dazzles the committee and disappoints the staff.
Third, there’s a fear of doing things differently. Search committees follow the same process because it’s familiar, even when the results are inconsistent. The cost of a bad hire at the leadership level is enormous—in dollars, in morale, in lost time—but we keep using the same playbook.
What Closing the Gap Looks Like
Closing the SAY-DO gap doesn’t mean throwing out resumes or ignoring credentials. It means going deeper. It means designing a hiring process that gets past the narrative and into the evidence.
What does that look like in practice? It means asking candidates to demonstrate their thinking, not just describe it. It means looking at performance data, not just pedigree. It means evaluating how someone actually leads—in context, under real conditions—rather than how well they interview.
The best hires I’ve seen in my career weren’t always the ones with the most impressive resumes. They were the ones who could show what they’d done—clearly, specifically, with evidence—and connect it to the needs of the school or district they were joining.
The Stakes Are Too High
Every hiring decision affects hundreds or thousands of students. A teacher builds a culture of learning. A principal shapes the culture of a building. A superintendent sets the direction of an entire community’s schools. These aren’t roles where we can afford to rely on polished resumes and strong interviews alone.
The SAY-DO gap is real. It’s costly. And it’s fixable.
The question for every school board, every superintendent, every hiring committee is simple: Are you hiring for what someone says they can do, or for what they’ve actually done?