SBL · Day-Of Game Plan · NY School Leadership Prep

Before anything else Sit Part One and Part Two on different days if you possibly can. Eight hours and forty-five minutes of scenario reading and constructed-response writing in one sitting is a stamina problem, not a knowledge problem, and stamina is the thing you cannot cram. If you must do both in one day, the 45-minute lunch between them is not a break — it is a reset, and there's a protocol for it below.

The order to attack each part in

You may work on the assignments in any order. Use that.

The rule

Performance tasks first

They need pre-writing, planning and a clear head, and they carry 60% and 75% of the score. Selected-response items can be answered tired; a 26-obligation essay cannot. Do the writing while your thinking is sharp, then let the multiple-choice carry you home.

The exception

Part Two's video comes when the tutorial says it does

The video plays once and you control when you press play — so get set up first: objective copied, four quadrants drawn, rubric components read. But don't leave it until you're tired, either. Treat it as the first real task of Part Two.

Part One · four hours

0:00–0:10

Survey the whole test. Read all three assignment prompts and skim the six documents on Assignment 1. Do not write yet. You want the shape in your head before the clock feels real.

0:10–1:15

Assignment 1 — Instructional Leadership. 10 minutes outlining on the notebooklet against the A–H template, 45 minutes writing, 10 minutes checking that all 26 blanks are filled. 600–800 words.

1:15–1:50

Assignment 2 — Educational Equity. 5 minutes on the exhibit hunting the outlier, 20 minutes writing, 5 checking. 300–400 words.

1:50–2:25

Assignment 3 — School Culture. Same shape, same template. 300–400 words.

2:25–2:35

Stand up. Breathe. Do not review what you wrote — you'll only churn. Reset for the selected-response block.

2:35–3:45

41 selected-response items. That's roughly 100 seconds each. Scenario sets first — read the questions before the exhibits, then hunt.

3:45–4:00

Sweep. Clear every flagged item. Answer everything — there is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is a guaranteed zero.

Part Two · four hours

0:00–0:10

Read the video assignment and the four rubric components before you touch play. Copy the lesson objective onto the notebooklet. Draw four quadrants, one per component. This is the highest-value ten minutes of the day.

0:10–0:30

Watch. 15–18 minutes, once, no pause. Write what you see and hear into the quadrants — quotes, not judgments. Aim for 4–6 observations per component so you can afford to discard some.

0:30–1:20

Write the video analysis. Level all four components. Evidence for each. One strength, one area for improvement, each tied to a component number. 300–600 words.

1:20–2:30

Developing Human Capital. Five documents, four separately scored tasks at 100–200 words each. Roughly 15 minutes per task plus 10 reading the documents. Name specific teachers and cite the document number every time.

2:30–3:10

Family & Community Engagement. Two issues, why and how family involvement helps, an action for each, and challenges with management. 400–500 words.

3:10–3:50

26 selected-response items. Roughly 90 seconds each. 16 of these are law and operations — if you've drilled the timelines, this is where you bank points fast.

3:50–4:00

Sweep. Flags cleared, nothing blank.

If you're doing both in one day

The 45 minutes between

Eat something with protein. Go outside if you can. Do not review anything. Do not relitigate Part One — it's submitted and reviewing it only imports anxiety into Part Two. Walk, hydrate, look at something far away.

Watch the crash

Part Two's video task is the highest-stakes 70 minutes on the assessment and it lands right after lunch. Go in knowing that, and give it the full setup ritual even though you're tired. The four quadrants do the remembering for you.

Protect the writing

If you fall behind, cut from the selected-response sweep, not from a constructed response. A rushed guess costs one item. A missing prompt part costs a whole rubric row.

In the room

What you get

A felt pen and erasable notebooklet — a small hand-held whiteboard. Use it for outlining and for the video quadrants. Your final response must be typed in the on-screen box.
A word-count feature in the lower-left corner of the response box.
A visible clock. You can navigate to any item and flag items for review.
A headset for the Part Two video.
15 minutes for the CBT tutorial and nondisclosure agreement before the 4 hours of testing time begins.

What you don't

No reference materials. Nothing you haven't memorized is available.
No pausing the video. Once. That's it.
No penalty for guessing — so never leave a blank.
Responses must be your own original work, in your own words.

Logistics checklist

The week before

Confirm date, reporting time and test center address on your Pearson VUE confirmation
Check the ID requirements — name must match your registration exactly
Plan the route and the parking; add 30 minutes of slack
Do one full timed Part One and one full timed Part Two, on separate days
Re-read Answer Patterns and the distractor checklist

The night before

Lay out ID, confirmation, keys, glasses, layers — test centers run cold
Skim the templates in the Task Playbook until the letters A–H are automatic
One light pass of the Cheatsheet — the five competencies and the scoring criteria
Set two alarms
Stop studying and sleep. Sleep is worth more than another hour of items at this point

The last thing to remember Two raters score each constructed response and must agree within one point. Most responses land at a 2 or a 3. The difference is not eloquence — it's answering every part, citing the documents by number, justifying each action, and proposing something a real building leader could actually do on Monday. When you're unsure, default to: gather information, involve people, advocate for the students furthest from the mean, and tie it back to student achievement.