PLC to maximize the advantages of collaboration.
Establishing the Essential Components of a PLC
When legendary football coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers would begin practice each year, he would hold the pigskin above his head and say to his grizzled professional athletes, “Gentlemen, this is a football” (Bleier, 2019). It is in that spirit that even schools engaged in the work of PLCs for decades must continuously renew their commitment to the essentials of the process.
The late Richard DuFour, the foremost proponent of PLCs along with Robert Eaker, once admonished me for my imprecision in language relating to PLCs. Like many educators, I referred to “PLC time” and “PLC meetings.” But he reminded me, “Professional learning communities represent the organizing principle for the entire school. It is who we are as a system, not the work of a single grade level or department” (R. DuFour, personal communication, October 31, 2015).
DuFour et al. (2016) are equally clear about the three big ideas that drive the work of PLCs.
1. A focus on learning. The first (and the biggest) of the big ideas is based on the premise that the fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels (grade level or higher). This focus on and commitment to the learning of each student are the very essence of a learning community. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11)
2. A collaborative culture and collective responsibility. The second big idea driving the PLC process is that in order to ensure all students learn at high levels, educators must work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11)
3. A results orientation. The third big idea that drives the work of PLCs is the need for a results orientation. To assess their effectiveness in helping all students learn, educators in a PLC focus on results—evidence of student learning. They then use that evidence of learning to inform and improve their professional practice and respond to individual students who need intervention or enrichment. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 12)
PLCs have the following essential characteristics.
• Members of a PLC work together in collaborative teams rather than in isolation and take collective responsibility for student learning.
• Collaborative teams in a PLC establish a guaranteed and viable curriculum that specifies the knowledge, skills, and disciplines students are expected to acquire, unit by unit.
• Teams use an assessment process that includes frequent, team-developed, common formative assessments based on the guaranteed and viable curriculum.
• Teams use the results of common formative assessments to:
a. Identify students who need additional time and support for learning
b. Identify students who would benefit from enriched or extended learning
c. Identify and address areas of individual strengths or weaknesses in teaching based on the evidence of student learning
d. Identify and address areas where none of the team members were able to bring students to the desired level of proficiency
• PLCs create a system of interventions that guarantees struggling students receive additional time and support in ways that do not remove them from new direct instruction, regardless of the teacher to whom they are assigned.
Collaborative teams within PLCs focus on the following four critical questions (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 learned it? (Assessment)
3. What will we do if they have not learned it? (Intervention)
4. What will we do if they already have learned it? (Extension)
While many schools devote most of their attention to curriculum, standards, and learning expectations (learning); less attention to common formative assessments; even less attention to specific student intervention plans; and least of all, the time devoted to extension of learning for students who need challenges far beyond their grade-level standards, the goal of PLCs should be to ensure high levels of learning for all students. Time should be given to each critical question; however, more time may be given to some of them.
Becoming a PLC in Name and Actions
In an analysis of data from more than 750,000 students, I found that schools engaged in the PLC process with depth and duration consistently display greater gains in student achievement, particularly in reading, mathematics, and science (Reeves, 2015). Further, schools implementing the PLC process for three, five, seven, or ten years perform at significantly higher levels than schools just beginning their PLC journey or schools with three years or fewer into that work. But this is the essence of the challenge because three, five, seven, and ten years is an eternity in schools. After three years, there may very well be a change in leadership, particularly in high-poverty schools (Levin & Bradley, 2019). Although a previous leader may have committed to organizing the school as a PLC, new leaders often fancy themselves as change agents and may not carry on the PLC implementation (or any initiative, however promising) with any real depth. This leaves too many schools functioning as ineffective PLCs, which DuFour and I call PLC lite (DuFour & Reeves, 2016).
PLC lite is an exercise in futility that helps neither students nor the educational systems that serve them. Too many schools have engaged in the illusion that their school is a PLC when, in fact, the staff have done little more than change the name of the staff meeting. Team members gather in the same room, but instead of facing one another, they sit in their own spaces and engage in private activities on their electronic devices. Topics such as announcements, field trips, and student discipline dominate these gatherings, and there is barely a hint of the four questions that focus on learning, assessment, intervention, and extension.
PLC lite schools are unlikely to enjoy the full benefits of collaborative teaching, irrespective of how many years they have been structured as a PLC. For educators and students alike, to display the achievement gains possible when functioning as a PLC, schools must strive to continuously improve by following the PLC principles consistently over a period of many years. These schools must take collective responsibility for student achievement, a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and a focus on the four questions. In sum, the mere label PLC is wholly unsatisfactory. Leaders must have a clear vision of what a PLC must be and do.
Keeping Focus in a PLC
Here’s a provocative question to consider: Who has the authority to spend a million dollars in your school and district? Even in a very large system, million-dollar authority is usually at a fairly high level (board president, superintendent, and perhaps deputy superintendent). But the truth is—the newest administrative assistant in your system can schedule meetings that consume a million dollars or more (Mankins & Garton, 2017). Consider the modest assumption that teachers earn, on average, $40,000 per year. That’s about thirty-two dollars per hour assuming a thirty-six-week school year and a seven-hour day. Multiply the thirty-two dollars by thirty teachers in a building and by thirty-six meetings per year, and you’re over $34,000.
Educational leaders who aspire to focus their work on effective PLCs must therefore be clear about what they will not do. They will not, for example, divert previous hours away from collaborative team time that is at the heart of PLC implementation in order to have administrative meetings that are burdened by administrative announcements
