We recently received the following message from a principal:

I’m trying to understand the relationship between essential outcomes and a math program. My interpretation is that the math program would support the students’ learning of the essential outcomes that our staff derived from our state’s standards.

My elementary school is the only elementary school of our eight in the district that has worked at implementing the tenets of a PLC. Someone at our central office is pushing the use of a program and its pacing guide as the district’s curriculum. I’m concerned because my staff worked hard last year at clarifying K–5 essential outcomes and developing common formative assessments. Either I misled my staff or I’m going to have to inform and influence my central office person to see the issue differently.

This principal’s dilemma is not unique. In this age of accountability and high-stakes testing, we have noticed an increasing number of teachers and principals experience a growing tension as they work together to build professional learning communities within districts and states which have adopted prescribed curriculum programs and textbooks that must be “implemented with fidelity.”

We contend any program or textbook should be 1) aligned with state and national standards and 2) considered a resource to support teacher dialogue and decisions rather than a mandate that eliminates the need for collaborative professional dialogue regarding the learning most essential to students.

Schools and districts benefit when each teacher (not just a committee or textbook publisher) participates in a collaborative process to clarify the essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions students must acquire. Ultimately, it is not the intended curriculum (the curriculum designated in a math program, textbook, or district curriculum guide) that will have the most powerful impact on student learning. For too long, districts have pretended that if they just purchase the right program and merely distribute it to individual teachers, each teacher will interpret it in a uniform way, assign equal priority to each standard, pace the curriculum consistently, assess student learning in a common way, etc. We have a century of evidence that this is not true. We cannot “teacher-proof” a curriculum.

Ultimately, it is the implemented curriculum, or what actually gets taught when the door gets closed, that has the far greater impact on achievement. Teachers who have worked with colleagues to become students of district resources and state standards, discussed with teachers at the next grade level what skills are most critical to students entering that grade, clarified the essential learnings, established common pacing, developed common formative assessments, and most important, committed to one another that they will honor the decisions made by the team are far more likely to provide students with the guaranteed and viable curriculum Dr. Robert Marzano has found impacts student learning so powerfully.

We would hope all teachers—through their collaborative study—will find value in and honor the district’s programs and textbooks as terrific resources. We also hope district central office staffs will honor the hard work and professionalism of teachers in every school and allow the programs and textbooks to be utilized as resources, not as lockstep curricula that remove teachers from curricular and instructional decisions.

Finally, results should drive the process for making this decision. If teams can demonstrate that their approach leads to higher levels of student achievement, the district should learn from those teams. If the results indicate student achievement is not improving, then teams should be willing to take a hard look at their curriculum, instruction, assessments, and adult learning needs.

Wishing You and Your Students a Great Year of Learning!

Charlie Coleman is principal at Quamichan Middle School in Duncan, BC, Canada. Charlie has 18 years of experience in education and has been a Professional Learning Communities at Work^TM Associate since 2006.

Teachers and principals in a number of schools and districts have asked, “How do you have the tough conversation about data without offending teachers?” and  “What do you do in response to discouraging data?”

Here is an illustration I have shared in several workshops:

It was the end of the first report card term at Quamichan Middle School and a week before our faculty meeting where we would discuss data and analyze results for the first time. We had spent the fall taking the initial steps to becoming a PLC. Because of these conversations, staff knew this was coming and were both excited and anxious about this new focus on “results, not intentions.” As I consolidated the data into a manageable document, one particular class was a major cause for concern. The math class in question had an 85% failure rate! This stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the subjects and grades across the school. While we would not be sharing the data with teacher names attached, it would be quite easy for staff members to assume which class and teacher these results came from. I did not want this first delving into data to derail our PLC journey, so I took some proactive steps.

First, the teacher and I had a private conversation. I told her that while reviewing the Term 1 results, one of her classes really stood out as a cause for concern. Before she could feel attacked or defensive, I suggested that this must be a very tough class with a number of students who had obvious learning challenges. This set her at ease, and she was able to share with me a number of her concerns and challenges with this particular class. I apologized for not noticing the challenges sooner and asked her how I could help support her and these students. Together we brainstormed some possible solutions, and I promised to work toward some of them. She remembered that we would be sharing all our data at the next faculty meeting and was relieved to know that we would use the dialogue on data as a solution-seeking opportunity, not a finger-pointing exercise.

Following that conversation, we spoke to our learning assistance teacher about ways we might support this teacher and these students. The two teachers were encouraged to meet before the next faculty meeting to see if they could put an intervention plan in place. They worked on this in collaboration with our Student Support Team. By the time the entire faculty met to review the Term 1 results, there was a plan in place and the teacher felt comfortable sharing both the troubling results and the resulting support plan.

The intervention plan we put in place made a dramatic difference. That one class went from 85% failing at the end of Term 1 to 85% passing by the end of Term 2. This was cause for celebration! The process we followed also enhanced trust and collaboration. Staff now know that a focus on results does not mean punishing teachers. They also saw that from the results flows responsive intervention and improved student achievement.

Twice this week we received emails from teachers who were just beginning to work in collaborative teams. One of the first issues they tackled was grading and homework policies, and they immediately began to disagree. They asked for advice.

My first reaction is to suggest that while the issues these teams have tackled are important, they are not the most critical for a new team to consider. Assuming the primary purpose of their school is to help all students learn, their team should begin its work with questions such as:

1. What is it we want our students to learn? What are the knowledge, skills, and dispositions we expect each student to acquire as a result of each unit we teach in eighth-grade language arts?
2. How will we know if our students are learning? What evidence will we gather and consider collectively to monitor the learning of each of our students?
3. How will our team and our school respond when students don’t learn? Do we have a process in place that ensures students are provided with additional time and support for learning in a timely, directive, and systematic way that does not deprive students of access to new, direct instruction?
4. How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency?

Two other important questions the team should consider early on are:

1. What are the collective commitments we are prepared to make to each other regarding how we will operate as a team?
2. What are the specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound goals we are working interdependently to achieve, and for which we hold ourselves mutually accountable?

The questions about grading and homework practices should only be addressed after the team has tackled these critical questions. In fact, we have witnessed teams spend months debating homework policy as a way of avoiding the more substantive issues essential to a team working in a PLC.

When a team does turn its attention to grading and homework, I suggest it considers the excellent blog posting by Bob Eaker and Janel Keating entitled “Drilling Deeper in a PLC” at http://www.allthingsplc.info/wordpress which offers advice for considering these topics as schoolwide issues. We also address the issues in chapter ten of Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work^TM: New Insights for Improving Schools.

I recommend teams consider these general parameters when discussing establishing team policies:

1. Articulate the assumptions behind a proposed policy and cite evidence (rather than feelings or perceptions) to support your assumptions.
2. Consider whether the proposed policy is aligned with the purpose of ensuring all students learn at high levels.
3. Consider whether the policy will encourage or discourage learning and the effort necessary to learn.

For example, imagine the following dialogue:
Q. Should we assign homework?
A. Yes!
Q. Why should we assign homework?
A. Because homework helps students learn at higher levels.
Q. Is there evidence to support the assumption that homework helps students learn at higher levels?
A. Yes. Giving students the opportunity to practice skills and to receive precise feedback about the practice will help students learn. Robert Marzano’s synthesis of research confirms this.
Q. Is it likely that some students will not complete their homework on time or choose not to complete their homework at all even if we threaten them with zeros?
A. It is not only likely, it is a virtual certainty!
Q. If we are committed to helping all students learn, and we believe that homework is a critical element in their learning, should students be able to opt out of homework? Shouldn’t we adopt a policy that requires students to act in ways that are essential to their learning?
A. But we can’t “make” students do their work?
Q. There are schools that have established the expectation that students will complete their homework, and they have put structures in place to require students to do so. Why adopt a policy that in effect says, “homework is essential to your learning, but you don’t need to complete homework if you would prefer not to as long as you are willing to fail” when we know some students will choose that option? Do we teach students to be responsible when we allow them to choose to be irresponsible?

Here are a couple of other questions teams might consider:

• Should a student be required to do homework in order to practice skills in which he or she has already clearly demonstrated advanced proficiency?
•  Should a student who fails to demonstrate proficiency be required to devote additional time and effort to his or her learning?
• Should a student who has completed that requirement be given another opportunity to demonstrate his or her learning?
• Does providing a student with the opportunity for extra credit contribute to his or her proficiency in essential skills?

When teams begin with the premise of an unrelenting commitment to help all students learn, it will help lead them to the right answers to these questions.

The term professional learning community has become enormously popular, but the actual practices that form the framework of the professional learning community concept are much less evident in most schools. There are schools and school districts that adopt the term but never deeply embed the practices into the day-to-day culture of teaching and learning. Classrooms and students are the very heart of a school. Unless we are willing to affect what happens to students, the professional learning community concept will swirl around—but not within—classrooms.

This is more difficult than it might seem at first, given the aspects of teaching and learning that educators have been reluctant to address. Classroom practices such as homework and grading have traditionally been left to the discretion of individual teachers. Such practices often vary greatly from classroom to classroom, and can in fact have a negative effect on student learning.

How can a professional learning community approach emotionally charged issues that have been generally ignored? One important point to remember is: Above all, a professional learning community is a way of thinking. Regardless of the complexity of the issue, using the professional learning community way of thinking can increase the likelihood of success.

A Way of Thinking in a Professional Learning Community: Four Principles

Begin with Building a Guiding Coalition

Issues such as homework and grading are complex, with few simple answers. A professional learning community is characterized, in part, by a culture of continuous improvement. We are constantly asking the question, “Is there a better way?” On most issues, especially those that are emotionally laden such as homework and grading, it is virtually impossible for the entire faculty to initially engage in an effective dialogue. There are simply too many people involved, each with their own background, experiences and strong opinions. Typically, they end up talking at each other. On most issues a large group is ill-suited for building consensus.

It is usually preferable to start with a few staff members who can address the issue in a more professional and rational way. Creation of a guiding coalition is the first step that characterizes a way of thinking in a professional learning community. By beginning with a smaller group, the likelihood of building consensus later with the larger group is enhanced.

Build Shared-Knowledge

The first step in addressing a problem or issue is to gain shared knowledge; nowhere is the phrase “a way of thinking” more applicable. The very term “professional” in a professional learning community implies that what we do will be based on the latest and best information available. Therefore, when a school, team, or group functions as a professional learning community, the approach should not be to average opinions. It should be to first build shared knowledge about best practice—with “best practice” being defined as those practices that have a positive impact on student success. A major cultural shift occurs when members of a professional learning community seek to learn together.

This doesn’t necessarily mean simply seeking out research findings, although research studies are obviously an important source of information. Best practices may be found right within a team, within our own school, or in another school or neighboring district. Best practices may also be found in articles or books. In professional learning communities, groups seek to learn, and they don’t limit their sources.

Engage in Experimentation

Gaining knowledge about effective practices does little to improve a school unless we are willing to try them out. A willingness to experiment with new approaches is a significant aspect of a way of thinking in a professional learning community. Through experimentation we develop a culture of continuous improvement. Through experimentation we try to close the knowing-doing gap by recognizing that we won’t know unless we try.

Experimentation involves a willingness to move beyond the status quo. However, be cautious. We must avoid the “Yeah, but” syndrome—obsessing on the flaws of an idea. There are obvious downsides to any new initiative. If we refuse to try things simply because they are not perfect, we will never try anything. This goal is not a perfect approach, but rather, a more effective approach than our current practice.

A Focus on Results

How is “more effective” defined in a professional learning community? There is a tendency in more traditional schools to judge our efforts based on acceptability or how well staff like them, rather than on how a particular approach is affecting student learning. In a professional learning community there is a commitment to assess our practices based on their effect on student learning. We must recognize that every attempt at improvement will not be successful. The willingness to examine a failed attempt is a good thing if handled correctly. By thoroughly analyzing what happened and why it happened, we can learn many things. After all, this is the essence of a learning community.

An Example: Grading

There are few issues that elicit stronger emotions than grading and report cards. Yet, in most traditional schools, grading is left to the discretion of individual teachers. Grading practices range widely even within the same school, grade level, or course. Grading is an important component that affects student learning, and an area in most schools where there is potential for improved practice. How can we use the professional learning community way of thinking to improve grading practices?

Having the entire faculty address the topic of grading will prove problematic at best. It will be more effective to have a smaller task force tackle the issue first. Their charge should be clearly defined and the core of this charge is that they must first gain shared knowledge about effective grading practices. (Of course, these will vary depending on grade level, areas of study, etc. We must also recognize that there is no one best grading practice.)

After learning together, analyzing, and discussing, the task force should periodically update the entire faculty on their work, sharing what they are learning, engaging in a deep, professional dialogue and, most importantly, listening deeply to faculty concerns, points of view, and questions.

As a result of thoughtful analysis, discussion, and reflection, the group can recommend a different approach to grading that might be tried, perhaps by one or two teams at first. (Notice that we used the word “tried” here rather than “adopted.” Initially, we are simply experimenting with a different approach.) After experimenting with various grading practices, the group or groups will analyze the effects of the new approaches, and may adapt them and try again. It is important to constantly share with the larger group so we are moving the whole faculty towards a willingness to try a new—and proven—approach. However, we are also making the commitment to monitor new approaches and make adjustments as needed.

Summary

If schools are to function as true professional learning communities, they cannot avoid difficult and complex issues. Recognizing that a professional learning community involves a way of thinking will increase the likelihood of success when addressing such topics—topics that impact student learning. This way of thinking will prove effective on most issues, especially emotional ones such as homework practices or grading. Keep in mind that the quality of what we do will be determined, to a great extent, by the quality of how we think!

We received a message from a school that had concluded assigning students to academic classes based on their ability was the best way to promote differentiated instruction for students. While we enthusiastically endorse the idea of differentiated instruction, we do not endorse the idea of tracking students as the best strategy for promoting differentiation for 4 reasons:

1. Research advises against it.

The question of the effects of ability grouping have been examined throughout the past 25 years, beginning when Jeannie Oakes and John Goodlad concluded:

a. Students in the lower tracks receive an education that is qualitatively and quantitatively inferior to that provided to children in the upper tracks. Whatever schools distribute that matters educationally, lower-track students get less of it.

b. Students in the lower tracks learn less than those in the upper tracks and what they learn is of less value.

c. Students in the lower tracks are held captive in them. There is very little opportunity to move to more advanced tracks.

d. Minority and low SES students are disproportionately assigned to lower tracks, whereas teachers perceived as the “best” teachers in a school are rarely assigned to the lowest track.

In short, there is almost nothing in research to say students in lower tracks benefit, and a great deal that says they are harmed by this structure.

2. It is misaligned with the goal of closing the achievement gap.

It is illogical to argue that the way to close the achievement gap is to assign some students into curriculum that is less rigorous and moves at a slower pace than the standard curriculum. Evidence and common sense says this strategy exacerbates rather than closes the gap each year.

3. Tracking sends the wrong message to students.

One of the most consistent findings in research of high performing teachers and schools is that they have high expectations for student success. Tracking sends the message to students in the lower tracks that their schools and teachers have diminished expectations for them. Furthermore, students internalize that message. Oakes found that students blame themselves for their lack of success in school. They embrace the implicit message their school is sending: “the rich curriculum is reserved for the ‘smart’ kids.” Students conclude, “I can’t be successful here because I am not smart.” We support Jonathan Saphier’s premise that schools should espouse “effort-based achievement” rather than “ability-based achievement.” The most successful school will send the message, “you can be successful here if you work hard. All of you will learn, but some of you will need some extra help and more time, but you all will be successful.”

4. When schools create multiple ability groups, they typically respond when students experience difficulty by dropping them into a lower group.

This option becomes the path of least resistance for both educators and students. Instead of intervening with more time and support to help students achieve standards, schools simply lower the standards. Students come to recognize that “the less I do here, the less I have to do.”

Therefore, we advised this principal to create heterogeneous groupings for homeroom placement and for most of the students’ day. We also recommended that teachers in the school work in collaborative teams to gather information from frequent common, formative assessments to determine which students need more time and more support to acquire the intended essential skills & concepts and which students are ready for a deeper application of those skills/concepts. Students could then be assigned to flexible, fluid, homogenous groups for intervention and enrichment - student-by-student, skill-by-skill - for a brief, designated portion of each day. Each member of the team, as well as other human resources the school might employ, could then be responsible for providing extra time and support for intervention and enrichment during that designated period each day.

There is a significant difference between differentiated instruction and differentiated curriculum. Tracking is dedicated to the later. Differentiated instruction is not just clustering all students with similar learning needs into one group and providing them with different curriculum, but rather it requires giving students who are struggling to learn the essentials more time, more support, and new learning experiences with different strategies and different structures such as small-group instruction and individual tutoring.

We are not opposed to providing middle school students with access to an accelerated program in mathematics or high school students with access to advanced placement programs, but we would advocate that the programs be open to any student willing to pursue the challenge. Schools could then serve as a bridge to the advanced curriculum rather than a barrier. PLCs at all levels attempt to meet the needs of students by building strong systems of intervention and enrichment rather than relying on remedial programs.

Recently we received a letter from library media specialists who objected to one of the proposals we offered to give teachers time to collaborate in our book, Learning by Doing. We suggested that an elementary school schedule could be constructed to ensure all of the students at a particular grade level were assigned concurrently to specialists-an art teacher, music teacher, physical education teacher, and library media specialist. Our belief was that this strategy would not only enable students to receive instruction in these critical areas from the people with the greatest expertise, but also provide grade-level teachers time to collaborate. This is one of several options we suggested, but it raised the ire of these library media specialists who contended we had an “antiquated notion” of the role of the library media specialist. To reinforce their point, they sent the 2008 edition of School Libraries Work!, a document designed to make the case for the importance of school libraries and the need for qualified library media specialists to staff them.

We reviewed the document carefully, and found ourselves agreeing with its major findings, including:

1. Schools should be provided with the resources to provide up-to-date print and nonprint materials in all school library/media centers.

2. Schools should be staffed with highly qualified library media specialists.

3. School libraries can play an important role in student achievement and school improvement.

4. Library media specialists can have a positive impact on student learning when they collaborate with classroom teachers to teach and integrate literature and information skills into the curriculum.

5. Library media specialists enrich the teaching and learning process when they teach skills and strategies students need to learn and achieve, are partners in educating children, teach students how to become effective users of ideas and information, and instruct students on how to seek, select, evaluate, and utilize electronic resources and tools.

7. Certified school library media specialists should collaborate with teachers regularly to provide resources and activities for course, unit, and lesson integration and to meet the intellectual needs of students.

Repeatedly throughout the document, there are references to the importance of library media specialists teaching students. We strongly and enthusiastically endorse that position. In fact, the schedule we described in Learning by Doing was specifically designed to ensure that these specialists were able to teach the critical skills students need throughout their elementary school years.

We also strongly and enthusiastically support library media specialists collaborating with grade-level teams. In fact, we advocate time being built into the school calendar and schedule to allow the specialist to work with teams to identify how the specialist could contribute to each team’s curriculum, priorities, and goals.

In short, we fully endorsed the positions of this organization, and we have presented recommendations that are consistent with those positions. We can find no reference in this document that the library media specialist must attend every meeting of every team, and in fact, in middle and high schools it would be virtually impossible for them to do so. We do not interpret collaborating with teachers “regularly” to mean weekly, and we doubt there are many schools in America in which the media specialist spends time each week with every collaborative team, particularly when most schools don’t even organize teachers into collaborative teams. We can think of no logical reason a library media specialist should be the only person in the building to attend every team meeting, nor do we argue that teachers in a K-5 building should spend one hour per week working with colleagues but the library media specialist should spend six. Clearly this would not be the best use of time for professionals who have unique skills and insights that all students should have access to on a regular basis. In fact, if we argued library media specialists must attend every meeting of every team every week, we have no doubt that we would be criticized for placing an unfair burden upon them. Finally, we can find no reference in this resource that library media specialists should not spend time each week teaching students. In fact, that point was repeatedly stressed throughout the report.

School Library Works! has confirmed our belief about the important role of the library media specialist in schools. We will continue to recommend that these professionals teach children and that they can be scheduled to do so in ways that contribute to making time for their colleagues to collaborate. We will also continue to stress that the school schedule and calendar should provide time for the library media specialist to work directly and regularly with the teams of teachers as important contributors to the collaborative process.

Current Reality: Teachers across the United States often express their concern that too much emphasis is being placed on state tests. In light of the sanctions being applied under NCLB on the basis of those tests, they raise a very valid point. I am not an apologist for state tests. As W. James Popham has pointed out, most state tests attempt to assess too many skills in too little time, with an assessment tool that is too limited. The result is that these tests do not provide teachers with the timely and specific information they need to adjust their instructional strategies and improve student learning.

On the other hand, we must acknowledge as a profession, that one of the reasons states have created assessments as an accountability tool is that schools were typically providing no evidence that all students were learning beyond teacher grades. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that in most schools, there is virtually no attempt made to guarantee the grades teachers assign to their students are based on consistent criteria and clear standards. Furthermore, these tests are here to stay, and teachers who are inattentive to them do their students a disservice.

The Question: Recently I received an e-mail from a teacher who objected to the fact that he was being asked to work in a collaborative team whose members were expected to work together to improve student achievement on the end-of-course state test in his subject. He objected to this collaboration because the state test was a 100-item, multiple choice assessment. The test had a significant impact on the students of his state who were required to pass it to receive a diploma.

He objected to working on a collaborative team to help prepare students for what he felt was a bad test. He was convinced working on a team to help prepare students for success on a standardized test: 1) would not improve the quality of teaching and learning in the school; and 2) would make it impossible for teachers to be creative and innovative. As he wrote, “Please tell me I am all wrong.”

My Response: OK, you are all wrong. You are creating not one, but two false dichotomies:

1. Either I must prepare kids for success on a high stakes test or I can improve the quality of my teaching and learning for my students, but I could not possibly do both.

2. Either I can prepare students for success on standardized tests, or I can be a creative and innovative teacher, but I could not possibly do both.

I taught U.S. history and never limited my assessment of student mastery of essential knowledge and skills to multiple choice tests. In fact, research from a variety of sources indicates that students who are called upon to compare and contrast, analyze, draw analogies, synthesize, and explain their thinking in short answers, essays, reports, and oral presentations not only learn at higher levels but outperform students without these experiences­-even when the assessment is a high-stakes multiple choice test. So I agree that a single test, or any single assessment strategy for that matter, should not be used to assess student learning. I am also very opposed to teacher effectiveness being judged on the basis of state assessments. But I urge you to reconsider the false dichotomies you have presented. They are not supported by fact.

The history teachers at Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, are the best, most creative, most innovative history teachers I have ever seen. They use their team process to support their innovation and their effectiveness. They have a passion for their subject and believe it serves a moral purpose. They want students to embrace their role as citizens and they engage them in a multitude of community service projects. Their students represent the largest block of election judges in their county and are very active in voter registration drives. These teachers also prepare more students for success on the Advanced Placements exams in social studies than any school in Illinois. They have an active history club and have won more state and national history fairs than any school in the Midwest. They conduct follow-up studies of their students one and five years after graduation to assess the extent to which students are involved as citizens of their communities. And, although they began to work collaboratively to strengthen their program, their teaching, and their collective capacity to help students learn long before there was a state test in Illinois, once the test was created they committed to helping their students achieve success on the state test. Incidentally, their aggregate achievement of their students on that test has always been among the top 1% of the schools in the state even though that state test relies heavily on multiple choice items.

The test in your state clearly has significant consequences for your students, and I would consider it negligent if you were unconcerned with their performance on that test. I would consider it equally negligent and short-sighted if you and your colleagues defined your sole purpose and priority as preparing students for success on that test. What are the essential outcomes you and your colleagues seek for all of your students? What is your process to ensure that your students have access to a guaranteed curriculum regardless of the teacher to whom they are assigned? What evidence is your team gathering to determine whether or not your students are acquiring the intended knowledge and skills? What process does the team and/or school have in place to intervene for students who are experiencing difficulty? What criteria does your team use when assessing the quality of student work? What evidence do you have that members apply the criteria consistently? What has the team done to ensure that when a student completes an essay, a research project, or a report his or her work will be scored consistently? How are using the evidence of learning gathered by your team to inform and improve your own teaching? These are the kinds of issues collaborative teams in a PLC address, and I believe they are exactly the issues teachers should resolve collaboratively and collectively. I hope that these are the very activities that your sense of professionalism and sense of equity would draw you and your colleagues to even if there were no state test. I certainly would support a district that asked you to engage in these activities during your regular contractual day and year, even at the risk of being charged with top-down mandates, because these are things teachers in every school should be doing.

I encourage you to present your administration, your community, and me with all the other evidence you are gathering as a team to monitor each student’s learning of the knowledge, skills, concepts, and dispositions you believe are most essential to their success. I submit, however, if your students have a deep and profound understanding of history they should be able to do just fine on a multiple choice test. And I hope you would include the success of your students on all high-stakes assessments (state tests, ACT exams, AP exams, etc.) as one of several areas of continuous improvement for you and your teammates.

Education thrives on acronyms - IEP, UBD, RTI, ESL, SES, LD, NCLB, AYP, API. Sometimes this abbreviated attempt to communicate can create confusion. Recently, we received a query from a high school principal who felt his efforts to help his school become a professional learning community (PLC) would be enhanced by converting the school into a Smaller Learning Community (SLC). Teachers in his school had been working collaboratively in content-specific teams as they attempted to implement the PLC concept. The principal proposed the school should be re-organized into separate houses with teachers working in interdisciplinary teams. He felt certain the SLC structure would promote the PLC concept, and he asked if we felt he should press forward despite the resistance of the staff. We did not, for the following reasons.

1. Moving teachers from working in isolation to working in collaborative teams is a difficult and challenging task. The school should stay the course it is upon rather than heading off in a new direction.
2. The principal should focus on building the capacity of staff to work within a collaborative culture rather than shifting his focus to structural issues.
3. There is little in either the history of American education or recent developments in the field that suggests converting schools into smaller learning communities will improve student achievement.

The current push for smaller high schools stands in direct contrast to the recommendations presented by James Conant after he conducted a study of high schools for the Carnegie Foundation in 1959. Conant, the former president of Harvard University and Ambassador to Germany, called for the consolidation of small high schools, arguing any school with fewer than 400 students should be abolished as ineffective and inefficient (our emphasis). His book on the subject, The American High School Today, became a national best seller.

At the time of Conant’s recommendation, 12,000 of the nations 21,000 high schools served fewer than 400 students. If “small” was the answer to the problems of high schools, the 1950s offered secondary students the perfect environment for a fabulous education. There is little evidence to suggest, however, the students of the 1950s were particularly well served by their small schools. In fact, almost one of every three high school-aged students had left school prior to graduation throughout the decade.

More recently (2005 and 2006), two independent research organizations conducted independent evaluations of the progress of the schools that had been organized into smaller learning communities between 2001 and 2004 with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their reports to the Gates Foundations concluded:

1. Students reported improved relationships with their teachers

2. The attendance rate of students in the restructured schools was worse than attendance in other schools in the district.

3. When taking previous achievement into account, students showed slightly better performance in language arts but worse performance in math than other high school students in the same district

4. The quality of student work was low in the restructured schools

5. Demanding and unwieldy teacher work loads “may be endemic to the staffing structures of many small high schools” (p.6) and the resulting teacher burnout threatened the viability of the initiative. Staff turnover at the schools was high.

6. Staff cited lack of tutoring services and appropriate opportunities to do homework as a barrier to the success of many students.

7. Lack of staff capacity made the restructured schools vulnerable

8. Changes in teaching and learning lagged behind the structural changes that characterized the schools (American Institute for Research and SRI International, 2005).

A year later the same two research agencies issued their final evaluation of the Gates initiative. They reported Gates schools confronted significant difficulty in bringing the attributes of high-performing schools into their restructured schools because “entrenched cultures and sets of expectations about student achievement and behavior often became obstacles” (American Institute for Research and SRI International, 2006, p.6, our emphasis). They urged the foundation to: “Rethink the school redesign strategy. Although there have been some isolated examples of apparently successful small schools emerging from the restructuring of a large high school, these have been the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, the data that we have for school redesign efforts are not encouraging” (p. 82, our emphasis).  The better hope for changing schools, according to the report, was to emphasize continuous monitoring of student learning, a “tight” school culture, and “greater attention to issues of curriculum and instruction”(p.4-5).

In other words, even with the support and backing of one of the world’s greatest private philanthropic organizations, structural change alone will not reform schools. Those who pin their hopes on high school reform based on the size of the school are destined to be disappointed. Ultimately the culture must change to impact classroom practice and student and staff expectations, and the best strategy for improving schools at any level will focus less on the structure of the organization and more on building the capacity of people within the schools to create a new culture.

It is essential to implement both Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and Response to Intervention (RTI) because these complementary processes are considered
research-based best practices to improve student learning.

Response to Intervention (RTI) is based upon the assumption that schools cannot wait for struggling students to fall far enough below grade level to “qualify” for help. Instead, schools should develop a systematic, schoolwide process in which struggling students receive targeted, research-based interventions at the first sign of difficulties. These interventions can be provided by special education and/or regular education resources. Yet for a school implementing PLC practices, this approach to helping students at risk should not be a new concept, as this process is identical to a PLC’s “Pyramid of Interventions.”

While RTI and a Pyramid of Interventions (POI) have essentially the same outcome, we would contend that effectively implementing RTI practices is not possible and should not be pursued until a school effectively begins implementing the three “Big Ideas” of a PLC-a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and a focus on results. These first steps create the foundation needed to more effectively respond when students don’t learn. To skip these vital steps and move directly into creating a RTI/POI program would be disastrous. How can a school be expected to create powerful interventions if the staff has not built a culture that believes all students can learn, has not identified what they want their students to learn, and has not created a timely assessment system that can accurately identify which students need additional help? A school or district would be putting the proverbial “cart before the horse” by requiring teacher teams to use their meeting time to discuss individual student needs, while delaying or neglecting other important, prerequisite team tasks.

Remember that the fundamental mission of collaborative time in a PLC is to focus on student learning. As a school embraces the idea that RTI and PLC are not two distinct “programs,” but instead ongoing processes that strive toward this same outcome, the more a school will view their collaborative time as not “PLC time” or “RTI time,” but “learning time.” In other words, we hope that the lines between RTI and POI continue to “blur” to the point where they are indistinguishable.

Our school district is using the book Whatever It Takes as our guide to establishing PLCs. Should administrators tell PLC groupings what to discuss at their weekly meetings, or should the needs of the campus and students drive the constructive conversations?

The way you have posed the question makes it apparent what you believe the answer should be. I suggest, however, that you are falling victim to the “Tyranny of OR.” You ask who should determine the agenda for team meetings-administrators who have their own agenda OR teachers who are motivated by the interests of their campus and their students? First, I would suggest that the interest of administrators and teachers need not be different. Both groups should be driven by the interest of the campus and its students.

Furthermore, it would be unreasonable in my mind for a district to provide staff with a resource as precious as time, and then be indifferent as to how that resource was used. That does not mean, however, that the administration needs to dictate the agenda or topics of every team meeting. The best schools will reject the Tyranny of OR and embrace the “Genius of AND” with both groups playing a role in determining how the time is to be used. For example, the administration, with the help of teacher leaders, could establish a timeline for when it expects teams to complete certain tasks (please submit your team norms by X date, your team SMART goal by Y date, your first common assessment by Z date, and your analysis of the results and your strategies to improve by ZZ date). In doing so, the administration should provide teachers with time, resources, examples, and support to complete those tasks. Teams, however, should be free to establish the agendas for their meetings provided they honor this timeline. If a team needs to spend some time on a topic that does not appear on the timeline (for example, the behavior of an individual student), it should be able to do so, but it should still be expected to do address the topics on the timeline.

Finally, remember that the question “Are we collaborating?” is not nearly as important as “What are we collaborating about?” Giving teachers time to collaborate is a necessary step on the PLC journey, but it is not sufficient. Teams must demonstrate the discipline to focus on the issues that actually lead to gains in student achievement if their schools are to function as PLCs.