The global pandemic left many schools across the country content with low expectations regarding student achievement (Gross & Opalka, 2020). It seemed as though learning loss and academic struggles would become the norm for students throughout the country, particularly in mathematics. Though few states could maintain or improve math performance on their respective standardized testing, there were examples where individual schools could prevent a learning loss and improve academically from where they were from 2019 to 2022. Out of 3700 school systems, seven of the top ten systems with the highest gains were from the state of Alabama (Crain, 2022). A case study was designed around one of these school systems, referred to in this paper as The Martell School System. This study catalyzed fellow school district leaders to learn strategies that could be duplicated in other systems for school improvement. Through times of change and uncertainty, influential instructional leaders maintain high levels of expectation. Through interviews with school and district leadership, and data analysis, knowledge will be gained that will allow schools to learn from these instructional leaders and implement strategies with their students as we return to normalcy.