Looking across the papers of this special issue, Volume 48, Number 2 and Volume 49, Number 1, this commentary paper suggests that by attempting to set stages of teacher effectiveness, collectively these five papers contribute toward making a step from exploring if teachers matter for student learning to understanding how teachers could be supported to improve the quality of their work and how this, in turn, could enhance student learning. After identifying methodological strengths of these papers, their three main perceived contributions to teacher education and policymaking are outlined. Areas for further consideration and ways in which the work reported in these papers could be advanced are also provided. By pointing to different future paths of this work, this paper makes a case about how promising the shift from the "if's" to the "how's" advanced in this paper collection could be.