style="font-size:15px;"> Based on the schoolwide goals, each collaborative team of teachers creates a SMART goal that describes the greatest area of need for that grade level or content area. It uses data to determine the current reality and achievement levels. Using the current data, the team projects an increase in learning. This is usually a school-year goal that fulfills the SMART criteria (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2013).
• Strategic and specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Results oriented
• Time bound
A goal is strategic and specific when it addresses a targeted need that teachers have identified by analyzing several data points. Teachers determine SMART goals by determining the gap between the current reality and proficiency. In addition, using data ensures that the goal is measurable. The gap between current performance and proficiency can be large and difficult to reach. Therefore, teachers should write goals with high expectations in mind and require some stretch to get there, but at the same time, they must be attainable. SMART goals are results oriented, not a to-do list of activities or a process. This means that a results-oriented goal includes a measurable focus on some aspect of student learning. We show the difference between process goals and results goals in table 1.2.
Table 1.2: Process Versus Results Goals
| Process Goals | Results Goals |
| Implement an integrated mathematics and science curriculum. | Reduce the failure of mathematics and science students by at least 20 percent. |
| Develop a balanced literacy program for primary students. | Increase the number of students who are reading on grade level by the end of third grade from 67 percent to at least 87 percent. |
| Adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward violence. | Eliminate violent behavioral incidences. |
Finally, SMART goals are time bound; there is a specific time frame to successfully achieve the goal. Examples of team SMART goals include the following.
• By spring 2017, the percentage of fifth-grade students meeting or exceeding grade-level proficiency on the reading state assessment will increase from 40 percent to at least 85 percent.
• By spring 2017, the percentage of ninth-grade algebra 1 students meeting or exceeding proficiency on the state end-of-instruction assessment will increase from 60 percent to at least 87 percent.
• By spring 2017, the number of second-grade students solving two-step word problems will increase from 27 percent (pretest) to at least 80 percent (post-test).
Teams develop SMART goals by examining data to determine program goals (goals focused on improving student learning in a grade-level subject or course) and cohort goals (goals for the same group of students over time). Teams review the data from the previous year to decide how they will improve their results in the upcoming school year. As collaborative teams focus on program-improvement goals, they should expect to get better results every year because they are learning more about what works and what needs improvement in instruction, curriculum, and assessment practices. Then the teams graduate the data to the next grade level or course to allow the teachers to review the results of their incoming students. Teams review the students’ data over time, as they progress through the grades, to determine if these cohort groups are continuing to grow across grade levels. The cohort data also provide more information to successive teachers as to who the new learners will be and what they may need.
The teams then chunk these yearly team goals into short-term checkpoints. Teams use common formative and summative assessments to determine if they are making progress toward achieving the end goal. (See chapter 5, page 79.) The results of these collaboratively developed and scored assessments determine instructional revisions and interventions for students along the way. This increases student learning and informs instruction in unit-by-unit cycles. Through this process of monitoring the short-term goals, students and teachers are able to celebrate successes and check progress closely to meet individual student needs and get them to proficiency. (See chapter 7, page 137, for more information on using SMART goals for accountability purposes.)
Clarify and Communicate Expectations for Collaborative Teams
As Rebecca DuFour often states in her PLC staff development presentations, “Clarity precedes competence.” Every educator comes to work wanting to do a good job, but if he or she doesn’t know what a good job looks like, it will ultimately lead to confusion and frustration. Collaborative teacher teams must engage in the right work that improves student achievement. The role of the principal and the leadership team is to clarify and communicate exactly what the right work looks like, sounds like, and feels like for all staff members. Increasing the capacity of any organization begins by building shared knowledge.
All school-improvement efforts designed to increase student learning consist of the following five essential elements as described by Richard DuFour in his PLC at Work keynote presentations (DuFour, 2016).
1. All teachers must work on a collaborative team. No one works in isolation.
2. Teachers implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum—a curriculum that contains the most important or essential knowledge and skills students need with time to learn them—on a unit-by-unit basis (Marzano, 2003).
3. Teams monitor student learning in an ongoing assessment process that includes team-developed common formative assessments.
4. Teams use the results of common assessments to improve individual practice, build team capacity to achieve goals, and intervene in or extend student learning.
5. The school provides a system of teacher, team, and schoolwide interventions and extensions.
Principals create a loose-tight culture by explicitly communicating (tight) what everyone will do and giving the teachers and collaborative teams the autonomy (loose) to determine how they will get there (DuFour et al., 2016). These five tight elements will increase student learning. We discuss them in further detail throughout this book.
Collaboration is the key to learning for all. It is the “engine that fuels the school improvement process” (Mattos et al., 2016, p. 37). As a part of the collaborative teaming process, teams take collective responsibility for student learning. “Team members work interdependently to achieve common goals for which they are mutually accountable” (Mattos et al., p. 37). Teachers begin to refer to students as our students, not just my students or the students in time-block five. No one individual has all of the knowledge, skill, patience, or insights to meet the needs of all students. It is through collaborative efforts that options and opportunities grow for the students each teacher serves. This process is as much about adult learning as it is about student learning. Student learning will not increase if the capacity of the teachers to deliver specific lessons and implement best practices does not also increase. In fact, “teachers and students go hand-in-hand as learners—or they don’t go at all” (Barth, 2001, p. 23).
Just being a member of a team isn’t enough. Collaborative teams must engage in the right work. The principal and leadership team must define, clarify, and communicate what that work looks like. The four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016) that teams answer on a unit-by-unit basis embody the right work. This is applicable for all schools, no matter if they are involved in the PLC process or not.
1.
