How I learned the value of a true PLC

There’s lots of talk about PLCs, but execution often is lacking. It’s really a straightforward concept that when done with consistency can yield dramatic gains in student achievement.

Ten years into teaching math, I was getting my principal’s license and teaching 8th grade when our director asked me to transfer to another school that needed two new math teachers. The other 8th-grade math position was filled by George Carlson, a teacher who came out of retirement to take the job.

As the school year started, I was getting to know other teachers in the building, including Carlson, who was in the other core. For my master’s degree in educational leadership, I had read several books by Richard DuFour and other authors about professional learning communities. I noticed a big discrepancy between what I was reading about PLCs and what I had seen in schools, even though many people called their gatherings PLCs.

One weekend, I was telling my dad about the discrepancy. He asked if I was doing what I could do within the learning community at my school. I had to admit that I also wasn’t putting DuFour’s ideas into practice. Chagrined, I decided to act and influence PLCs where I could. Could a real school make a PLC work the way it worked in a book? And could that work really affect student growth?

The model

From my studies, I learned that DuFour’s model of a PLC would focus on four processes:

1. Determining what we want students to know and be able to do;
2. Figuring out how to assess whether students had learned it (common assessment);
3. Deciding what to do with those who didn’t learn it (intervention plan); and
4. Deciding what to do with those who already know it (DuFour, 1998).

In Dufour’s model, all grade-level teachers who teach the same subject should work together to answer these questions. Disagreement is expected, but teachers must agree on these four ideas if all students are to benefit. Teaching methods can and should vary, but the targets (essentials), common assessments, and intervention plans have to be the same if the PLC is to produce teacher learning. Teachers teach many topics, but PLCs must have subsets of the essentials for the students to learn. Once teachers determine the essentials, they continue using the interventions until they have exhausted every possible approach, and students have reached proficiency. This is the toughest part.

The plan

The Monday after talking to my dad, I asked Carlson if he’d be willing to try working with me to develop a true PLC. After I had outlined my best understanding of a PLC, he agreed to try. Through give-and-take, we identified 11 essential math skills that every 8th grader must know and be able to do. The 11 essentials we had landed on were not complex, just standards-based skills that all 8th graders should have already known. Then we created an 11-question common assessment to see if students knew these essentials.

We had made it as clear as we could what students were expected to know and be able to do.

We anticipated that more than half of the students would be able to do all 11 essentials correctly. We were so wrong! Our initial assessment in October showed that an abysmal 14% were proficient. We found it hard to believe that so few 8th graders knew how to do all 11 essentials correctly, but it was ground truth and gave us our work list.

We had to decide what to do with the 14% who already knew the material and what to do with the vast majority who missed at least one and, in some cases, all of the 11 essentials. Finding time to intervene was a factor. This was our plan:

• A 30-minute daily advisory period became our intervention time, which allowed the regular class to keep pace with the district curriculum.
• Every student’s name went on a spreadsheet with each column labeled with one of the 11 essential skills. We would focus on each essential until as many of the students passed the one essential as possible. Then we would move on to the next essential.
• Every student got at least two two-day interventions for each essential they missed. Each advisory period, Carlson and I worked separately on one essential with a two-day pattern of a mini-lesson, followed by practice on the essential with a peer tutor (a student from the 14% group), followed by a similar mini-lesson and practice the second day, with a culminating short assessment on that essential. Each core team used the advisory period differently so we couldn’t intervene in math every day and had to work within each school’s routine to find the time.
• Carlson and I created a folder for each essential, which had two targeted practice sheets for each essential skill and a few two-question assessments for that essential. We used the first targeted practice sheet in the first intervention advisory period and the second one the next time, along with one version of the assessment. Students had a peer tutor for the targeted practice sheets but had to do the reassessments alone. Most students passed the reassessment after the two focused lessons. Those who didn’t pass got their second intervention.

We posted a five-foot-tall tracking thermometer (similar to the type often seen in a community fundraiser) in the hallways between our cores that showed the current percentage of 8th graders who could do all 11 essentials.

The results

Students were growing in their confidence since they knew what the targets were and appreciated learning in focused, bite-sized lessons. We had made it as clear as we could what students were expected to know and be able to do. Carlson and I were getting excited — our thermometer (which I updated with paint) was rising — and we just knew children were growing. The work was hard, but the target was clear.

By winter break, 38% of the 8th graders were proficient on all 11 essentials. Day after day, advisory period after advisory period, we kept focusing on essentials. By February, 83% of all 8th graders had demonstrated the ability to do all 11 essentials. Knowing that every student had received multiple interventions, even if they hadn’t yet passed, we believed we had done as much as we could do.

At this point, Carlson and I haggled over the next set of essentials and came up with another common assessment. We were less surprised when we learned that only 19% of the students were proficient on these essentials. We got to work again, and by the time of the state tests, 40% of the students could do all of the second set of essentials.

We continued until the year ended, but from that point in March, the die had been cast: The state tests had been taken and now we had to wait to see if working as a PLC had made a difference in student growth.

I decided to act and influence PLCs where I could. Could a real school make a PLC work the way it worked in a book? And could that work really affect student growth?

The payoff

As I look back on that year, I think about how much more we could have done if Carlson and I had known each other and started earlier in the school year. I left the school after that year to become an assistant principal at another school, and Carlson went back into retirement, as we eagerly awaited our state results to see if a PLC that resembled DuFour’s model would really help students grow.

When the state results came out that summer, Carlson and I were astonished: The 8th graders at our school had grown more in that year than any other grade level of students in any tested subject in our 22,000-student school district. The median growth percentile (MGP) of our PLC was 85. In Colorado, this means that if all of the growth scores of every 8th grader at our school were lined up from highest growth to lowest growth, the middle student’s score would be an 85. In Colorado, a MGP from 35 to 65 is considered average growth and above 50 is considered good. The year before, our school 8th graders had a MGP of 52 in math; the year after Carlson and I left, the MGP was back down to a 57. By comparison, the same group of students who in our math classes achieved an MGP score of 85 managed only to score an MGP of 56 on their reading exams.

Conclusion

Through this work, I saw the power of professional learning communities in action. If the district or the state had given Carlson and me the essentials, we might not have had the inner drive to stick with the interventions. Because we had identified the essentials on our own, using our professional knowledge and the framework of the standards, we owned the essentials and we believed the interventions were necessary. It was also important that not everything was essential. Many things are just taught, and some of it is learned. But the essentials must be both. When teachers agree on the essentials and intervene until they believe students really know them, students and schools grow. As a principal, I needed that last year of teaching experience to solidify my knowledge of the true value of a PLC. I am thankful that my dad encouraged me to do my part to make my PLC resemble what I was reading about.

Reference

DuFour, R. & Eaker, R. (1998). Professional learning communities at work: Best practices for enhancing student achievement. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

CITATION: Leane, B. (2014). How I learned the value of a true PLC. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (6), 44-46.