schools may get by without teachers who know how to use the full range of extant knowledge about and skill with PLCs and about teaching and learning if their students come from high-expectations families and affluence. These students may have the experience of having been read to since the age of two, or the experience of travel, museums, music lessons, sports teams with coaching, lively dinner conversations, family picnics, national parks, or camping. But highly developed collaborative practice is required for many of our children of poverty, and if we could generate enough of it, we wouldn’t have the intractable achievement gap we do today. That is a fact documented every single year by schools highlighted on the Education Trust’s website.
The achievement gap for children of color and of poverty is one with devastating consequences for our youngsters, our workforce, and our economy, but most of all our democracy. We used to be the land of opportunity, and our institutions (churches, clubs, and community organizations) supported that narrative. We are becoming the land of inequality with permanent residency for those trapped by poor education.
The promise of democracy is a fair chance at a good life. This book includes the prescriptions for how our education system can be the promise keeper. There’s plenty of practical advice for practitioners at all levels, like interview questions that uncover teachers’ beliefs about learning, about responsibility, and about students’ capacity to learn. But at bottom, this book is a compelling case for “ongoing, job-embedded learning of the adults” (page 2), about expertise, and about powerful use of data with deeply collaborative analysis. Policymakers take note: ongoing learning is the “key to improved learning for students” (page 2). Everything needs to be organized around that.
| INTRODUCTION |
A question relevant to readers and writers alike is: “Who is the intended audience for this work?” A potential reader may frame the question a slightly different way: “Am I included in the intended audience?” or “Will reading this benefit me in some way?” A writer will ask: “Who am I attempting to influence?”
When a book is intended to appeal to a wide range of stakeholders, the challenge of answering the “Who am I attempting to influence?” question becomes considerably more daunting. In this introduction, we hope to clarify our intention to focus on the wider audience—both legislative and educational. We’ll examine the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) and explain why it must address the interests of a wider range of stakeholders rather than those of a particular interest group. This broader approach operates on the assumption that people in different parts of an organization can find common ground if they make it a priority to do so.
The Professional Learning Communities at Work™ (PLC) process has helped hundreds of schools and entire districts go from under-performing to high achieving, from good to great, and from great to greater (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). (Visit www.allthingsplc.info/evidence to see numerous models of the PLC at Work process around the world.)
PLC schools and districts implement processes that drive continuous improvement throughout the organization. The educators within the organization recognize that the key to improved learning for students is the ongoing, job-embedded learning of the adults who serve those students. Therefore, educators in a PLC no longer work in isolation (“my classroom,” “my students”) but rather work in collaborative teams. Collaborative team members take collective responsibility for ensuring that each student in their course, discipline, or grade learns at high levels—grade level or better—each year.
A PLC school’s master schedule is aligned to the number-one priority of the school: ensuring high levels of learning for all. Educators learn with and from each other because time is allocated each week for teams to work and learn together. Collaborative team members within a PLC school or district work collaboratively to:
■ Agree on the most important skills, concepts, and dispositions every student must learn
■ Monitor each student’s learning on a frequent basis using team-developed common assessments
■ Analyze student-learning results to determine which students are struggling to learn and which students have demonstrated proficiency
■ Share instructional practices with one another that proved to be effective, based on the student-learning results from their common assessments
■ Use their joint analysis of evidence of student learning to set goals for continuous improvement
The school, rather than the individual classroom teacher, guarantees students receive extra time and support to learn beyond daily classroom instruction during a period of the school day specifically designated for extra support. When students struggle to learn, based on the results of team common assessments, the support is timely and targeted intervention. When students have demonstrated high levels of learning, the extra support is designed to extend their learning.
When the PLC process is implemented unit by unit in each course and grade level, students and educators continually learn at higher levels. The success of each student is impacted not by one teacher to whom the student has been assigned but rather by a caring and skillful team of teachers who take collective responsibility for the learning of each student and each other.
A Rare Opportunity
Americans interested in public education in the United States have a rare opportunity. The passage of ESSA gives stakeholders in education the chance to redefine the purpose, priorities, and processes of schooling.
The key word in the preceding paragraph is opportunity, rather than certainty. In this book, we will demonstrate the following.
The passage of ESSA gives stakeholders in education the chance to redefine the purpose, priorities, and processes of schooling.
■ The passage of ESSA represents a significant policy change from prior legislation and regulations.
■ The authority of the U.S. Secretary of Education has been drastically diminished by the passage of ESSA. In fact, the legislation prohibits the secretary from making recommendations dealing with curriculum and instruction.
■ States now have the ability to establish their own new and unique goals, standards, curriculum, evaluation processes, incentives, and punishments.
■ One of the challenges at the state level is to determine whether state departments of education will use their increased authority to identify creative ways to improve schools and help more students learn at high levels, or whether they will continue to pursue the ill-advised, failed policies from 2001 through 2016: the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, enacted in 2001 and signed by President George W. Bush, and supported by majorities in both parties; and the Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative established by President Barack Obama in 2009.
■ Another challenge at the state level is communicating with more than fourteen thousand U.S. school districts (United States Census Bureau, n.d.) in a way that provides clarity of purpose and a shared common vision of schooling.
■ At the local level, educators must come to a common understanding of how ESSA can impact their day-to-day work. Ultimately, we will call on them to build their collective capacity to embrace the following two key ideas.
a. All students can learn.
b. The entire staff shares a collective responsibility to support the academic success of every student.
■ The most promising
