how the PLC process can implicitly and explicitly develop teachers to the highest levels of competence. Chapter 4 discusses level 3 of the HRS model—a guaranteed and viable curriculum. In this level, the PLC process focuses on ensuring a curriculum that is consistent from teacher to teacher and focused enough to allow for rigorous analysis of content by students. Chapter 5 covers level 4—standards-referenced reporting. Here, the PLC process ensures that the school sets appropriate goals and reports progress for individual students as well as the school as a whole. Chapter 6 addresses level 5 of the HRS model—competency-based education. Here the PLC process must help facilitate a paradigm shift that allows students to move at their pace through content. At this level, traditional approaches to scheduling and use of time are completely transformed.
Chapters 2–6 also include information on lagging indicators, quick data and continuous improvement, and leader accountability for every leading indicator. Leader accountability sections offer a proficiency scale that leaders can use to judge their effectiveness relative to the corresponding indicator.
Each chapter concludes with a section on transformations, which features significant quotes and thoughts from leaders whose schools have experienced improvement based on implementing these leading indicators. Finally, chapter 7 concludes with how district leadership can establish roles, collaborative teams, and commitments to ensure they build high reliability schools.
Leaders who hope to build and sustain high reliability schools where high levels of learning for all is the reality must consider the PLC process as the cornerstone of the HRS model. The remainder of this book is designed to describe the five HRS levels and explain how the PLC process brings each level to life in the real world of schools.
Chapter 1
High Reliability Organizations and School Leadership
Rick DuFour’s introduction provides the context for schools that seek high reliability status using the PLC process as a foundation. Without a doubt, the PLC process, particularly as articulated by Rick and his colleagues, brings the vision of a true high reliability school within our grasp.
It is important to remember that the PLC process and the HRS model developed independently of one another. The PLC process has its roots in the literature on professional collaboration (Rosenholtz, 1991) as well as reflective practice (Schön, 1983; Stenhouse, 1975). The term professional learning community became popular in education in the 1990s (Cuban, 1992; Hord, 1997; Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996; McLaughlin, 1993). These early discussions noted it was the work of Rick DuFour and his colleagues that solidified the nature and importance of the PLC process in K–12 education (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010; DuFour & Eaker, 1998).
The concept of a high reliability organization (HRO) has its roots in the study of highly volatile situations. G. Thomas Bellamy and his colleagues (Bellamy, Crawford, Marshall, & Coulter, 2005) explain:
The study of HROs has evolved through empirical investigation of catastrophic accidents, near misses, and organizations that succeed despite very trying and dangerous circumstances. Launched by Perrow’s (1984) analysis of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the literature evolved through discussions of whether such accidents are inevitable, as Perrow suggested, or might be avoided through strategies used by organizations that operate successfully in high-risk conditions (Bierly & Spender, 1995; Roberts, 1990). Although there are some similarities between this literature and research on organizational effectiveness and quality improvement, HROs “have been treated as exotic outliers in mainstream organizational theory because of their unique potentials for catastrophic consequences and interactively complex technology” (Weick et al., 1999, p. 81). (p. 385)
Bellamy and his colleagues popularized the notion of applying the concept of HROs to K–12 education.
It is the confluence of these two distinct lines of theory and development that forms the basis of this book. As the title indicates, this book discusses that intersection of the PLC process and the HRS framework from the perspective of leadership.
A central tenet of this book is that effective leadership should occur within an HRO context. This would necessitate a specific process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting certain types of data regarding what occurs in schools on a day-to-day basis. When those data indicate that something has gone awry or will soon go awry, schools must take immediate corrective action. When those data indicate that all is well, schools offer appropriate acknowledgments and celebrations. This information loop’s defining feature is that it operates with extreme efficiency and attention to detail, so much so that a school might consider itself highly reliable as to its continuous improvement.
This approach minimizes the importance of a school leader’s personal characteristics and maximizes critical, data-informed actions a leader takes. Effective leadership is not a function of having a specific personality type or a certain demeanor; it is a function of informed action aimed at continuous improvement.
Before covering the specifics of this leadership approach in depth, we find it useful to briefly summarize some past research on school leadership.
Early Days of School Leadership and Effective Schools
The importance of school leadership in a high-performing school began to emerge during the Effective Schools movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1979, Ronald Edmonds first identified effective schools’ correlates in a seminal article titled “Effective Schools for the Urban Poor.” At the time, his list included six variables, one of which was strong administrative leadership. By 1982, Edmonds whittled down the variables to the five well-known effective schools’ correlates in a paper titled Programs of School Improvement: An Overview. In that paper, Edmonds (1982) notes that characteristics of an effective school include the following:
1. The leadership of the principal notable for substantial attention to the quality of instruction,
2. A pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus,
3. An orderly, safe climate conducive to teaching and learning,
4. Teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students are expected to obtain at least minimum mastery, and
5. The use of measures of pupil achievement as the basis for program evaluation. (p. 8)
Edmonds was certainly not the only researcher who recognized the importance of school leadership for student achievement during this era. Many others identified school leadership as an important variable as well, including George Weber (1971), Beverly Caffee Glenn and Taylor McLean (1981), and Wilbur B. Brookover (1979). Although a well-articulated definition of instructional leadership did not exist during the early days of the Effective Schools movement, effective schools researchers knew that it was a crucial ingredient. So, what goes into building effective school leaders? It turns out that they share many of the same characteristics.
Characteristics of Effective School Leaders
Since the initial work of Edmonds in 1979, the research community has continued to generate
