who participate. They will not accept curriculum additions that are not within the scope of the foundational PLC response to question 1: What do we want students to know and be able to do? They will not accept assessments that are disconnected from the curriculum, even if those assessments bear seductive labels such as formative or benchmark. In the context of a PLC, assessments are only of value if they are clearly linked to the question of what we want students to know and be able to do. Otherwise, these assessments are not formative, but rather better labeled as uninformative. In order to be formative, an assessment must bridge the PLC discussion from the first two questions about learning and assessment to the third and fourth questions about intervention and extensions of learning. Focus, in sum, is not merely about deciding what to do. Rather, it requires vigilance in protecting the time of teachers and administrators so that they can focus on what matters most.
Summary
In this chapter, we considered the essential components of PLCs as well as the more common practices that elevate the label over the practice. In this case, we are left not with a PLC, but a PLC lite. We also considered research that strongly suggests PLC implementation takes time; the schools that implemented PLCs over three, five, seven, and ten years ago show remarkably greater gains in student achievement than schools with just a few years of implementation. Often, the schools most in need of support—those with high-poverty students—are least likely to have stable and consistent leadership. Schools must commit to the PLC process even through cases of leadership change, and leaders must have a clear vision of what a PLC must be and do.
Once a school or district is organized as a PLC, it can begin following the other practices found in equity and excellence schools. The next chapter will discuss the laser-like focus on student achievement that is key in all high-poverty, high-performing schools.
CHAPTER 4
Display a Laser-Like Focus on Student Achievement
Although I’ve never been in a school that does not claim to focus on student achievement, a quality distinguishes equity and excellence schools from other schools: they transform vague claims and aspirations into specific practices. First, and most important, equity and excellence schools have a laser-like focus on student achievement. This chapter reviews the specific and tangible ways equity and excellence schools demonstrate their focus on student achievement.
First, these schools display visible indicators—tangible and highly visible reminders on the school walls and in the trophy cases—that student achievement is the goal. Second, these schools allocate time differently, and they hold formal and informal conversations that vary dramatically from other schools. Third, their leadership is focused almost entirely on students and not on the many administrative demands that can consume the minutes, hours, and days of most school leaders. Fourth, their relationships with students and colleagues are remarkable for their intensity, depth, and personalization.
Considering What’s on the Walls
One of the most prominent differences between high- and low-achieving schools comes down to a simple factor—What’s on the walls? Even the most casual observer in an equity and excellence school cannot walk down a hallway without seeing charts, graphs, and tables displaying student achievement information, as well as data about continuous student improvement. The data are on display not only in principals’ offices but also throughout the schools. In addition, school trophy cases full of exemplary academic work (such as clear, concise essays; wonderful science projects; terrific social studies papers; student art work; musical compositions; and outstanding mathematics papers) are abundant. In short, equity and excellence schools make it clear to all observers—including students—that outstanding academic performance is highly prized.
The strategic use of the trophy case is not limited to academic work. Certainly, there is a place for athletic trophies, as well as for awards from the many extracurricular and academic competitions in which students excel. However, equity and excellence schools take their displays one step further. Along with the trophies are examples of student artwork, musical compositions, original poetry and dramatic works, and additional real student work that led to the awards and trophies. One middle school dedicates a trophy case to student goals. It contains the written hopes and aspirations of more than eight hundred students, encased in glass and immune from graffiti. Every hallway in this school visibly shows that the school staff care not only about collectively earned trophies but also about the individual accomplishments of each student.
Making the Most of the Leader’s Time
Every school in a district has a certain number of minutes in the day to allocate for classes, lunches, staff meetings, planning periods, and so on. But there is a difference in how equity and excellence schools allocate time. Their laser-like focus on student achievement is evident in the formal and informal conversations of grade-level, department, and entire-staff meetings. No time is wasted on announcements, but rather time is spent exclusively on discussions about teaching and learning. When I asked one equity and excellence principal, whose district had won the Broad Prize for being the best urban school district in the United States, how she finds time for all the work she and the faculty do on common assessments and data analysis plus their relentless focus on student achievement, she said, “I don’t have more time than anybody else. I just stopped doing faculty meetings three years ago. We spend every moment we have on student achievement. And besides,” she added, “making oral announcements to adults is primitive” (L. Capsen, personal communication, November 1, 1997).
While many schools allocate time for teacher collaboration under the banner of PLCs, the phenomenon of PLC lite (as discussed in the previous chapter) results in schools that have time allocated for collaboration but fritter it away without the laser-like focus on student achievement, the hallmark of effective PLCs. In equity and excellence schools, however, not a second of collaborative time is wasted, and every meeting has a purpose. Principals, administrators, and instructional coaches may not be in every meeting, but they monitor how the time is spent. Others use a very simple four-line email the collaborative teams complete in the final portion of every meeting. The four email lines correspond to the four critical question of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016):
1. What do we want students to know and be able to do? (Learning)
2. How will we know if they have learned it? (Assessment)
3. What will we do if they don’t learn it? (Intervention)
4. What will we do if they already have learned it? (Extension)
However, it’s not always possible or even necessary for a collaborative team to address every question in every situation. For example, early in the year, there is often a heavy focus on the first question so all classes in the same grade and subject have a consistent curriculum. Additionally, because using common formative assessments is a key to an effectively functioning PLC, a school might devote extra time to the second question. But over the course of every month, principals can reasonably expect teachers to address all four questions. The ultimate goal is for schools to ensure high levels of learning for all and to avoid PLC lite by addressing all four questions every month. Schools can track progress by completing a simple four-bar frequency chart at the end of each month to show how the school as a whole addressed the four questions in collaborative team meetings. If all the teams addressed all four questions, those four bars should be equal, as can be seen in figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1: The hypothetical PLC profile.
However, my experience is that the actual time allocation tends to be uneven, with the most time allocated to lesson planning (learning),
