visiting all the equity and excellence schools, my colleagues and I noticed profound differences between the assessment and instructional practices of these schools and those of low-achieving schools (Reeves, 2004). This section presents seven different teaching practices equity and excellence schools incorporate to improve student achievement. This is not a recipe for success, or a cookie-cutter set of programs. Rather, the following chapters describe the specific practices that distinguish successful high-poverty schools from their well-intentioned but less successful counterparts.
These findings have been surprisingly robust over time, clearly separating transient fads and programs from practices that have enduring value. Of the seven practices described in these chapters, only the focus on professional learning communities is new. While the original research considered the value of collaboration, the latest and best evidence on learning communities suggests the value of a more intentional structure for effective collaboration (see a wide variety of specific examples of the impact of the Professional Learning Communities at Work® process at the noncommercial website, AllThingsPLC.info). It is no accident that the number of these suggestions is small. In contrast to school improvement plans I have seen with scores of priorities—I’ve reviewed school plans with more than seventy priorities and district plans with more than two hundred priorities and programs—these seven key ideas correspond to the value of focus that my large-scale quantitative study suggested (Reeves, 2011a). Moreover, this emphasis on focus is consistent with recent global observations from author, speaker, and educational consultant Michael Fullan (2016).
Chapters 3 through 9 each discuss one of the following recommended practices.
1. Organize their school or district as a professional learning community.
2. Display a laser-like focus on student achievement.
3. Conduct collaborative scoring.
4. Emphasize nonfiction writing.
5. Utilize frequent formative assessment with multiple opportunities for success.
6. Perform constructive data analysis.
7. Engage in cross-disciplinary units of instruction.
Each chapter includes specific observations useful for readers seeking to translate theory into practice.
CHAPTER 3
Organize Their School or District as a Professional Learning Community
When I first observed equity and excellence schools, I noticed they were built around collaborative teams of teachers, coaches, and administrators. In the intervening years, thanks to the work of Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, Rebecca DuFour, Tom Many, Mike Mattos, and others who have followed in their footsteps, we have a vocabulary for this sort of collaboration—professional learning communities (PLC; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). This is the central organizing principle of successful schools, whatever their demographics. Thus, in this first chapter on what equity and excellence schools do differently, we will discuss the key principles involved in organizing a school as a PLC.
In this chapter, we will establish the essential components of a PLC and identify how schools can become a PLC in both name and actions. We will conclude by discussing how leaders can keep focus within the PLC to maximize the advantages of collaboration.
Establishing the Essential Components of a PLC
When legendary football coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers would begin practice each year, he would hold the pigskin above his head and say to his grizzled professional athletes, “Gentlemen, this is a football” (Bleier, 2019). It is in that spirit that even schools engaged in the work of PLCs for decades must continuously renew their commitment to the essentials of the process.
The late Richard DuFour, the foremost proponent of PLCs along with Robert Eaker, once admonished me for my imprecision in language relating to PLCs. Like many educators, I referred to “PLC time” and “PLC meetings.” But he reminded me, “Professional learning communities represent the organizing principle for the entire school. It is who we are as a system, not the work of a single grade level or department” (R. DuFour, personal communication, October 31, 2015).
DuFour et al. (2016) are equally clear about the three big ideas that drive the work of PLCs.
1. A focus on learning. The first (and the biggest) of the big ideas is based on the premise that the fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels (grade level or higher). This focus on and commitment to the learning of each student are the very essence of a learning community. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11)
2. A collaborative culture and collective responsibility. The second big idea driving the PLC process is that in order to ensure all students learn at high levels, educators must work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11)
3. A results orientation. The third big idea that drives the work of PLCs is the need for a results orientation. To assess their effectiveness in helping all students learn, educators in a PLC focus on results—evidence of student learning. They then use that evidence of learning to inform and improve their professional practice and respond to individual students who need intervention or enrichment. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 12)
PLCs have the following essential characteristics.
• Members of a PLC work together in collaborative teams rather than in isolation and take collective responsibility for student learning.
• Collaborative teams in a PLC establish a guaranteed and viable curriculum that specifies the knowledge, skills, and disciplines students are expected to acquire, unit by unit.
• Teams use an assessment process that includes frequent, team-developed, common formative assessments based on the guaranteed and viable curriculum.
• Teams use the results of common formative assessments to:
a. Identify students who need additional time and support for learning
b. Identify students who would benefit from enriched or extended learning
c. Identify and address areas of individual strengths or weaknesses in teaching based on the evidence of student learning
d. Identify and address areas where none of the team members were able to bring students to the desired level of proficiency
• PLCs create a system of interventions that guarantees struggling students receive additional time and support in ways that do not remove them from new direct instruction, regardless of the teacher to whom they are assigned.
Collaborative teams within PLCs focus on the following four critical questions (DuFour et al., 2016).
1. What do we want students to know and be able to do? (Learning)
2. How will we know if they learned it? (Assessment)
3. What will we do if they have not learned it? (Intervention)
4. What will we do if they already have learned it? (Extension)
While many schools devote most of their attention to curriculum, standards, and learning expectations (learning); less attention to common formative assessments; even less attention to specific student intervention plans; and least of all, the time devoted to extension of learning for students who need challenges far beyond their grade-level standards, the goal of PLCs should be to ensure high levels of learning for all students. Time should be given to each critical question; however, more time may be given to some of them.
Becoming a PLC in Name and Actions
In an analysis of data from more than 750,000 students, I found that schools engaged in the PLC process with depth and duration consistently display greater