Читать книгу Leading a High Reliability School - Richard DuFour - Страница 9

Introduction

The Primacy of the PLC Process

By Richard DuFour

In the subtitle of his 1961 book, Excellence, John W. Gardner asks, “Can we be equal and excellent too?” Contemporary educators face the challenge of answering this question in the affirmative. Schools that strive for excellence must take steps to ensure that all students not only have equal access to but also acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that will prepare them for their future. These institutions that were created to sort and select students based on their perceived abilities, socioeconomic status, and likely careers now are called on to ensure every student graduates from high school with the high levels of learning necessary for success in college or other avenues of postsecondary training. In short, a school cannot become excellent unless it commits to equity as well.

The Effective Schools research of the 1970s and 1980s established that some schools more effectively than others help students achieve the intended levels of proficiency. Schools, however, often overlook that student achievement differs significantly more within schools than between schools largely because of the variability in teacher effectiveness within the same school (Hattie, 2015).

This finding should come as no surprise given that the traditional schooling structure in a large portion of the world has involved individual teachers in isolated classrooms making decisions based on their experience, expertise, preferences, and interests. This structure has subjected students to an educational lottery in which what they learn, how much they learn, how they are assessed, and what happens when they struggle are almost entirely a function of their assigned teacher.

Those who hope to lead a high reliability school (HRS) must confront the challenge of reducing this variability so all students have access to good teaching, a guaranteed and viable curriculum, careful monitoring of their learning, systematic interventions when they struggle, and extension when they demonstrate high levels of proficiency. Their best hope for meeting this challenge lies in making the Professional Learning Communities at Work (PLC at Work) process the cornerstone of HRS creation. In doing so, educators will serve the cause of both excellence and equity.

The PLC at Work Process as the Cornerstone of High Reliability Schools

In order for the HRS model to drive a school toward excellence, educators in the school must know that the professional learning community process represents the foundation of their efforts. We recognize that although the term PLC has become ubiquitous, groups apply varying definitions. For our purposes, we want to distinguish among the terms professional learning community, collaborative team, and professional learning community process.

In many schools, educators refer to their collaborative teams as a PLC. We discourage this use of the term. A PLC is a school or district that is attempting to implement the PLC process. Many elements of the process require schoolwide coordination that goes beyond the work of a grade-level or course-specific team. The collaborative team, although not a PLC, is the fundamental structure of a PLC and the engine that drives the PLC process.

The PLC process calls for educators to work together collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. It operates under the assumption that purposeful, continuous, job-embedded learning for educators is the key to improved student learning. Before delving into the nuances of PLCs, let’s consider a fundamental prerequisite to any effective school—providing a safe and orderly environment for both student and adult learning.

The Importance of a Safe and Orderly Environment

When Abraham Maslow (1943) created his hierarchy of needs, he cited safety and orderliness as fundamental needs second only to biological needs such as air, water, food, and so on. But he found that although addressing safety needs is vital for progressing to higher levels of self-actualization, it does not ensure that progression. The same is true of classrooms.

Every classroom teacher knows the importance of effective classroom management. Individuals with outstanding content knowledge will flounder as teachers if they cannot maintain a safe and orderly classroom. But effective teachers go beyond classroom management to use strategies that engage learners and constantly monitor their learning. Classroom management is a necessary condition for effective teaching, but it is not sufficient on its own.

This same principle applies to schools. Maintaining a safe and orderly environment is important, but it is not nearly enough. Every school leader must ensure a safe and orderly environment for both student and adult learning. But if school leaders seek to create excellent schools, they must move beyond running a tight ship.

Given the significance of a safe and orderly environment, I find it striking how frequently staff members lack knowledge of specific indicators that could provide insight into how to enhance this important aspect of their school. I ask faculty:

• “How many of you know the number of discipline referrals that were written in your school last year?”

• “How many of you know the number-one cause of discipline referrals in your school?”

• “How many of you know the number of student suspensions that occurred in your school last year?”

• “Is there a time of day, day of the week, or place in the school that discipline problems are most likely to arise?”

• “Do students report feeling safe in your school?”

• “Do students report either being bullied or witnessing bullying in your school?”

In most instances, faculty members cannot answer these questions. If they don’t have a clue about their current reality, they find it difficult to improve on that reality in any coordinated way. Therefore, school leaders should keep information about the school’s environment at the forefront and frequently engage the staff in analyzing the information and identifying potential areas of need and strategies for improvement. One strategy is embracing the three big ideas driving the PLC process.

Assumptions Driving the PLC Process

Three big ideas drive the PLC process (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). The extent to which educators consider and embrace these ideas has a significant impact on that process’s outcomes in a district or school. These three big ideas include (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture, and (3) a results orientation.

A Focus on Learning

The first and biggest of the big ideas states that a school’s fundamental purpose is to ensure all students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that will enable them to continue learning beyond the K–12 system. This represents a radical departure from the traditional premise that school’s purpose is merely to give students the opportunity to learn. The mantra of “The teacher’s job is to teach, and the student’s job is to learn” supports this traditional premise. The relevant question for this premise asks, Was the content taught, or was the curriculum covered? If, however, a school’s fundamental purpose is to ensure that teachers do not merely teach students but expect them to learn, the relevant question becomes, Did the student learn? Did the student acquire the intended knowledge, skills, and dispositions of this course, unit, or lesson?

In our work with schools in implementing the PLC process, my colleagues and I have found that we can shift thinking on the purpose of school by addressing the four pillars that serve as the foundation of the PLC process: (1) mission, (2) vision, (3) collective commitments, and (4) goals (DuFour et al., 2016).

1. Mission: Why does the school exist? What is the fundamental purpose of our school? What have we come together to accomplish?

2. Vision: What must we become as a school in order to better fulfill our fundamental purpose? Can we describe the school we hope to become in the next five years? What policies, practices, procedures, and culture align best with a mission of learning for all?

3. Collective commitments: How must we behave? What commitments must we make and honor in order to become the school in our vision so we can better fulfill our fundamental purpose? Do our commitments describe in specific terms the behaviors we should demonstrate today to help move our school forward?

4. Goals: Which steps will we take and when? What targets and timelines will we establish to mark our progress in becoming the school we have described in our vision? How will we know if our collective efforts are making a difference?

Schools often prefer to avoid these foundational questions and get right to the nuts and bolts of the PLC process. Doing so is a mistake. A school will struggle in its PLC implementation efforts if a faculty persists in believing that its job is to teach rather than to help all students learn, and if staff members have no idea where the school wants to go in its improvement efforts. It will struggle if educators refuse to articulate the commitments they hope will characterize their school and if they have no benchmarks to monitor progress. Therefore, we highly recommend that leaders engage the staff in considering the questions posed in the PLC foundation.

Marcus Buckingham (2005), a global researcher and thought leader, contends that, above all else, leaders of any effective organization must know the importance of clarity. Having clarity means communicating consistently in words and actions the organization’s purpose, the future the organization will attempt to create, the specific actions members can immediately take to achieve its goals, and the progress indicators it will track. Engaging the staff in considering the four pillars of the PLC foundation is the key to establishing that clarity.

However, leaders must do more than simply invite people to share opinions. A fundamental prerequisite in decision making in a PLC is building shared knowledge about the most promising practices. In other words, staff members must learn together about the research base and evidence that can help them intelligently answer the PLC foundation questions. Uninformed people make uninformed decisions. Therefore, in building consensus in a PLC, leaders must take responsibility for providing staff with the information they need to make good decisions at all points in the process.

A Collaborative Culture

The second big idea driving the PLC process is that for a school to help all students learn, it must build a collaborative culture in which members take collective responsibility for all students. The traditional mantra of “These are my students” gives way to “These are our students, and we share the responsibility to ensure their learning.” Here again, the issue of equity comes to the fore. What to teach, content sequencing, appropriate pacing, assessment, intervention, extension, and instructional strategies have traditionally come under the individual classroom teacher’s purview, which, as previously mentioned, makes equity virtually impossible.

The PLC process calls on collaborative team members to make these decisions collectively rather than in isolation. The entire team decides what students must know and be able to do for the entire course and for each unit within the course. It establishes the content’s sequencing and the appropriate pacing for each unit. The team develops common formative assessments for each unit and agrees on the criteria it will use in judging the quality of student work. The team identifies students who need intervention or extension, and the school creates the systems to ensure students receive this additional support in a timely manner. It analyzes transparent evidence of student learning in order to inform and improve its practice. None of this will occur without effective leadership that ensures it puts structures and supports in place to foster effective collaboration. We will address the elements of that leadership later in this introduction.

A Results Orientation

The third big idea that drives the PLC process states that educators must assess their effectiveness on the basis of results rather than intentions. Project-based goals such as “We will integrate technology into our language arts program” and “We will develop six new common assessments” give way to SMART goals that ask educators to focus on how their projects and efforts will impact student achievement. The SMART goal acronym helps educators focus on evidence of student learning (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014). A SMART goal is:

• Strategic—The goal aligns with a school or district goal. A team that achieves its SMART goal contributes to the school or district goal.

• Measurable—The goal provides a basis of comparison to determine whether evidence of student learning indicates improvement or decline.

• Attainable—The goal is realistic enough that team members believe they can achieve it through their collective efforts.

• Results oriented—The goal focuses on results rather than activities or intentions. In order to achieve a SMART goal, a team must typically help more students learn at higher levels than in the past.

• Time bound—The goal specifies when the team expects to achieve its goal.

Teams can and should create SMART goals for the entire school year and for every unit they teach during the year.

We cannot overemphasize the importance of collective inquiry and open dialogue about the three big ideas for successful implementation of the PLC process. More rigorous standards and more informative assessments cannot, by themselves, improve a school. If educators convince themselves that they fulfill their responsibility simply when they present content, that they work best in isolation, and that they need to use evidence of student learning only to assign grades—rather than to inform professional practice to better meet student needs—even well-designed structures and processes have little impact on student learning. School transformation requires significant changes in the culture of schooling, which, in turn, requires educators to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue about the assumptions, beliefs, and expectations that should drive their work.

Critical Questions for Team and School Consideration

It stands to reason that any school that claims it is committed to helping all students learn must engage collaborative teams in collectively considering certain critical questions. The four critical questions of learning in the PLC process include (DuFour et al., 2016):

1. What is it we want students to learn?—What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we expect each student to acquire at the end of this instructional unit, course, or grade level?

2. How will we know if students are learning?—How will we monitor each student’s learning during daily instruction and during the unit?

3. How will we respond when students don’t learn?—What systems do we have in place to provide students who struggle with additional time and support for acquiring essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions?

4. How will we extend learning for students who are highly proficient?—What systems do we have in place to extend learning for students who have already learned the essential standards?

In Collaborative Teams That Transform Schools, Robert Marzano, Tammy Heflebower, Jan K. Hoegh, Phil Warrick, and Gavin Grift (2016) recommend two additional questions that educators in a high reliability school should consider.

5. How will we increase our instructional competence?—What systems are in place to help teachers improve their pedagogical skills?

6. How will we coordinate our efforts as a school?—How will we ensure that all initiatives in the school are operating in a cohesive and coherent manner?

Let’s compare and contrast how a traditional school and a PLC would attempt to address these six questions.

What Is It We Want Students to Learn?

Marzano’s (2003) research in What Works in Schools has made the term guaranteed and viable curriculum part of the educational lexicon. Thanks to his work, two general understandings persist: (1) effective schools provide students with access to the same curriculum content in a specific course and at a specific grade level, regardless of their assigned teacher; and (2) teachers can teach this curriculum in the amount of instructional time provided. (Chapter 4, page 107, elaborates on the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum.)

Traditionally, districts have addressed this key element of effective schooling by creating district curriculum and pacing guides and distributing the appropriate guide to each teacher based on his or her grade level or course. This practice often creates the illusion of a guaranteed and viable curriculum because, theoretically, teachers of the same content work from the same document. Too often, however, the mere distribution of documents has little impact on what actually happens in the classroom. We cannot assume that individual teachers will read the documents, interpret them consistently, apply the same priorities to each curricular standard, devote similar amounts of time to the various standards, and have the ability to teach each standard well. Furthermore, simply distributing documents to teachers does not result in either the teacher clarity or the teacher commitment essential to provide students with a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

As we state in Leaders of Learning (DuFour & Marzano, 2011):

The only way the curriculum in a school can truly be guaranteed is if the teachers themselves, those who are called upon to deliver the curriculum, have worked collaboratively to do the following:

• Study the intended curriculum.

• Agree on priorities within the curriculum.

• Clarify how the curriculum translates into student knowledge and skills.

• Establish general pacing guidelines for delivering the curriculum.

• Commit to one another that they will, in fact, teach the agreed-upon curriculum. (p. 91)

States and districts can prescribe an intended curriculum, but the implemented curriculum—what gets taught when the teacher closes the classroom door—has a bigger impact on the attained curriculum—what students actually learn. High reliability schools require the PLC process to establish a rigorous, guaranteed, and viable curriculum that reflects a commitment to both excellence and equity.

How Will We Know If Students Are Learning?

Once again, it stands to reason that a school committed to ensuring high levels of learning for all students would have a process in place to continually monitor and support each student’s learning. That process would include strategies that check for student understanding during classroom instruction each day. Team members could work together to enhance each other’s strategies for making these ongoing checks. For example, teachers could ask students directed questions focused on content that is critical to students’ academic success, have students write short responses or solve problems during observation, and gather signals from students as to their level of understanding using whiteboards, clickers, or exit slips. This daily formative assessment is intended to help teachers assess student understanding and make instructional adjustments. It also alerts students to areas of confusion or misunderstanding so they can seek the appropriate help.

But the cornerstone of the PLC assessment process is team-developed common formative assessments administered at least once during a unit. A team assesses students who are expected to acquire the same knowledge and skills, using the same method and instrument, according to the team’s agreed-on criteria for judging the quality of student work.

Extensive research supports the effectiveness of common assessments (Ainsworth, 2014; Battelle for Kids, 2015; Chenoweth, 2009; Christman et al., 2009; Odden & Archibald, 2009; Reeves, 2004). But the research in support of formative assessments is even more compelling. As Dylan Wiliam and Marnie Thompson (2007) conclude, effective use of formative assessments, developed through teacher learning communities, promises not only the largest potential gains in student achievement but also a process for affordable teacher professional development. Marzano (2006) describes formative assessment as “one of the most powerful weapons in a teacher’s arsenal. An effective standards-based, formative assessment program can help to dramatically enhance student achievement throughout the K–12 system” (back cover). Also, W. James Popham (2013) writes, “Ample research evidence is now at hand to indicate emphatically that when the formative-assessment process is used, students learn better—lots better” (p. 29).

Unquestionably, team-developed common formative assessments serve the interest of equity because a teacher team, rather than an isolated teacher, establishes questions of assessment types, rigor, and criteria for success. It is important to emphasize, however, that these assessments also serve the purpose of excellence. When teachers have clarity on what they want their students to accomplish and they know how they will ask students to demonstrate their proficiency, they more effectively help students learn.

Furthermore, when teachers use the information from these common formative assessments to examine the impact of their individual and collective practice, they experience a powerful catalyst for instructional improvement. In a PLC, educators use a protocol for examining evidence of student learning. First, team members identify struggling students who need additional time and support for learning. Second, they identify students who demonstrate high proficiency and will benefit from an extended learning opportunity. Providing this intervention and extension is part of a schoolwide plan to better meet the needs of individual students.

The team then turns its attention to the performance of students taught by specific teachers. If a teacher’s students have performed particularly well, the team asks the teacher to share strategies, ideas, and materials that contributed to that success. If a teacher’s students have struggled, the team offers advice, assistance, and materials to help the teacher improve his or her instruction. The team uses evidence of student learning to promote its members’ learning.

As Kerry Patterson and his colleagues find in their study of what influences people to change, “Nothing changes the mind like the hard cold world hitting it in the face with actual real-life data” (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008, p. 51). Richard Elmore (2006) comes to a similar conclusion, writing, “Teachers have to feel that there is some compelling reason for them to practice differently, with the best direct evidence being that students learn better” (p. 38).

When a collaborative teacher team analyzes the transparent results of a common formative assessment, evidence of student learning speaks for itself. A teacher who genuinely believes his or her students lack the ability to produce quality work can be persuaded to re-examine that assumption when students taught by other team members consistently demonstrate quality. As Elmore (2010) writes, “Adult beliefs about what children can learn are changed by watching students do things that the adults didn’t believe that they—the students—could do” (p. 8). Concrete evidence of irrefutably better results acts as a powerful persuader.

Common formative assessments can also bring about change in instructional practice through the power of positive peer pressure. I have never known a teacher who feels indifferent to how peers perceive him or her when it comes to instructional competence. A teacher whose students consistently cannot demonstrate proficiency on common formative assessments will either look for ways to improve instruction or look for a school where a lack of transparency about student learning allows him or her to hide. Unfortunately, many such schools exist.

When a team administers a common formative assessment, another possible outcome may occur. What if no one on the team has the ability to help students demonstrate the intended knowledge or skill? If the team agrees that the skill or concept is indeed essential to student success, and it agrees that its common formative assessment reliably ascertains whether students have become proficient, it becomes incumbent on the team to look to its professional development for teaching the skill or concept more effectively. The team can look to other educators in the school or district, specialists from the central office, coaches, networks of educators, or workshops on the topic. In other words, student learning needs drive professional development.

How Will We Respond When Students Don’t Learn?

In even the greatest schools, some students will likely not meet an instructional unit’s intended outcomes by the time the unit ends, despite teachers’ best efforts and intentions. In a traditional school, in which a single isolated classroom teacher takes sole responsibility for each student’s learning, that teacher faces a quandary. On one hand, the curriculum calls for moving forward with new important content, and the teacher hopes to ensure his or her students have access to that content (or an opportunity to learn). Most students in the class are ready to proceed. On the other hand, some students cannot demonstrate proficiency in essential prerequisite skills for the next unit. The school has charged the teacher with leaving no student behind, so what does the teacher do? Does the teacher provide most students with busywork for a few days so he or she can attend to those who are struggling? Or should the teacher move on and hope that students lacking prerequisite skills somehow pick them up on their own? Imagine this teacher has a daily class load of more than 150 high school students. Given this scenario, the teacher’s job is not difficult—it is impossible.

In a traditional school, the individual classroom teacher must resolve this problem. The disparity with which teachers address the question, What happens when students don’t learn? provides one of the best examples of the traditional school model’s inherent inequity. Some teachers allow students to retake assessments; others don’t. Some teachers provide feedback on student papers or projects before assigning grades; others simply grade the first attempt. Some teachers keep parents informed of students’ progress; others won’t. Some teachers come early and stay late to assist struggling students; others won’t or can’t. Some teachers accept late work without penalty; others accept the work but deduct points for tardiness. Still others won’t accept late work and assign a zero. Some teachers average scores to determine a final grade; others consider early efforts formative. Perhaps the best evidence of the variety in what teachers do when students struggle is that teachers often appeal for their own children to get assigned to certain teachers while avoiding others.

Educators in a PLC recognize the inherent inequity in the traditional system and work collectively to establish a systematic process for providing students with additional time and support for learning, regardless of students’ assigned teachers. The master schedule’s purposeful design provides time during the regular school day when students receive this support without missing new direct instruction. The system of interventions relies on frequent, timely monitoring of each student’s learning and provides additional time for learning as soon as a student struggles. Students continue to receive this support until they demonstrate proficiency.

Let’s apply this premise to the dilemma of the teacher who teaches a unit and then discovers that most students have achieved the intended standard, but a few have not. In a PLC, the teacher would teach the next curricular unit, ensuring that struggling students receive additional time and targeted support. Because the collaborative team has agreed on the unit’s essential or priority standard, pacing, and common assessment, the teachers providing intervention know what help students need. The team can say, “These students need help with subtracting two-digit integers,” as opposed to, “These students are not doing well in mathematics.” When the teachers working with these students have confidence in the students’ ability to demonstrate proficiency on the intended skill, they give the students a similar iteration (form B) of the original assessment, and their new scores replace their previous struggling scores.

Traditional schools have operated under the assumption that they have fixed time and support for student learning. Every student will receive sixty minutes of language arts instruction per day for 176 school days. Every student will receive essentially the same amount of the teacher’s attention and support. But if time and support for learning remain constants, that will always make learning the variable. Some students will learn given that amount of time and support, and others won’t.

In a PLC, because of the collective commitment to high levels of learning for every student, time and support are variables, and learning is the constant. Perhaps most students will master a skill in three weeks of sixty minutes of instruction a day. Others may need four weeks of ninety minutes a day to achieve mastery. Most mission statements do not say, “Our mission is to help all students learn fast and the first time we teach a skill”; they simply say, “Our mission is to help all students learn.” In order to stay true to that mission, faculty members must create a system that ensures students receive additional time and support when needed.

Some schools attempt a system of interventions that has teachers stop new direct instruction and create different groups in the classroom to meet different student needs during time set aside for intervention and extension. This strategy is certainly better than traditional practice, but it is not the preferred strategy in a PLC for three reasons. First, it perpetuates the idea that a single teacher must take responsibility for a designated student group, rather than share collective responsibility for each student’s learning with a teacher team. Second, it is a complex endeavor for a single teacher to simultaneously meet the needs of students requiring intervention, practice, and extension. Third, more of the same is not the best strategy for meeting student needs. A system of interventions that instead relies on the entire team or a team of intervention specialists gives students an opportunity to hear a new voice and perhaps a new strategy for learning a skill.

How Will We Extend Learning for Students Who Are Highly Proficient?

If a school focuses solely on helping students achieve their grade level or course’s standards, it places an artificial ceiling on students’ access to learning. For example, Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, is committed to “success for every student.” It interprets that commitment as ensuring every student will graduate with high levels of learning necessary for success in college or career training. At one point in its history, the school discouraged students from learning beyond the college preparatory curriculum by establishing limits and prerequisites to serve as barriers to the advanced placement (AP) program’s college-level work.

Over time, the faculty recognized that many students were capable of successfully completing college-level work while still in high school. So teachers now provide an extensive AP program and encourage all college-bound students to participate in that program while still in high school. The school also provides tutorial support for students who need assistance to succeed in the program. It has had remarkable results. Since the early 1980s, the percentage of graduating students who has successfully completed an AP course has increased from 7 percent to 90 percent, and the mode AP exam score for students is 5, the highest possible score (Adlai E. Stevenson High School, 2017).

Every department at Stevenson also fully commits to providing highly capable students with access to academic competitions that challenge them to go beyond the traditional high school curriculum. These competitions provide both students and teachers with external benchmarks to assess the impact of the school’s commitment to advancing high-performing students’ learning.

Mason Crest Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia, is a nationally recognized Title I school that takes a different approach to extending student learning. In their planning for every unit, collaborative teams not only identify the essential standards and common formative assessments for that unit but also develop plans for extending high-performing students’ learning at the end of the unit. While some team members work with students who need intervention and others work with students who need additional practice, some team members work with students who are ready for deeper exploration of the topic.

The proficiency scale approach explained in chapter 5 (page 137) provides yet another approach to addressing the issue of extending proficient students’ learning. In short, a school committed to high levels of learning for all students will not establish an artificial ceiling on how much students can learn.

How Will We Increase Our Instructional Competence?

As mentioned earlier, Marzano and colleagues (2016) have added a fifth question for collaborative teams in high reliability schools to consider: How will we increase our instructional competence? This question makes sense because the high reliability school commits to ensuring more good teaching in more classrooms more of the time. Therefore, once a team has agreed on an essential standard and how it will assess student learning, members may benefit from sharing ideas about how to best teach that standard.

I fully support this idea. I also, however, must offer a caveat. The best predictor for how a teacher will teach a unit is how he or she has taught it in the past. So conversations about different practices absent evidence of student learning can easily end up discussing, “I like to teach it this way,” or “I have always taught it this way.” As John Hattie (2009) warns, reflective teaching has the most power when it is collective (involving a teacher team rather than an individual) and based on actual evidence of student learning.

Marzano (2009) offers similar advice when he asserts that the ultimate criterion for successful teaching is student learning, rather than any particular teacher moves. He writes, “The lesson to be learned is that educators must always look to whether a particular strategy is producing the desired results as opposed to simply assuming that if a strategy is being used, positive results will ensue” (p. 35). So although team members may benefit from a discussion about possible instructional strategies prior to teaching a unit, that discussion should never replace collective analysis of the strategies’ effectiveness based on actual evidence of student learning during and after the unit.

I made the case earlier in this introduction that one of the most powerful ways a school can increase instructional competence is to have collaborative teams collectively analyze transparent results from common formative assessments. This is an important context to keep in mind when reading chapter 3.

How Will We Coordinate Our Efforts as a School?

I could not agree more with the significance of this critical question, which Marzano and colleagues (2016) have added to the HRS model of school improvement. In fact, my colleagues and I have made nondiscretionary, coordinated, schoolwide efforts a central tenet of our work. A high reliability school must address the arbitrary and capricious nature of practices that characterize too many schools and must insist that all staff honor coordinated systems and processes so that the school can strive for both excellence and equity.

It ultimately falls on school leaders to ensure the staff coordinate their collective efforts in a way that benefits students. Effective leaders can address this responsibility by establishing a simultaneously loose and tight school culture, or what Marzano and Timothy Waters (2009) have called “defined autonomy” (p. 8). Such a culture makes certain clearly understood priorities, processes, practices, and parameters are nondiscretionary. These elements of the culture are tight or defined, and effective leaders will confront those who violate or ignore the parameters. But within those few tight parameters, the culture is loose, which empowers individuals and teams to make decisions and enjoy a great deal of collective autonomy.

In our work with schools, my colleagues and I insist that the following three elements of the PLC process must be tight.

1. The fundamental structure of the school is the collaborative team, in which members work interdependently to achieve common goals and take collective responsibility for the learning of all students.

2. Each collaborative team does the following.

a. Creates a guaranteed and viable curriculum, unit by unit, that provides all students with access to essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions, regardless of their assigned teacher

b. Uses an assessment process that includes frequent team-developed common formative assessments to monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis

c. Applies a data-analysis protocol that uses transparent evidence of student learning to support, inform, and improve its members’ individual and collective practice

3. The school creates a schoolwide plan for intervention and extension that guarantees students who experience difficulty receive additional time and support for learning in a timely, directive, coordinated, and systematic way; and that gives those who are highly proficient additional time and support to extend their learning.

An emerging theme in educational leadership finds that no one individual has the expertise, energy, and influence to bring about substantive school change. School leaders, then, must from the start face the challenge of establishing a guiding coalition or leadership team that will help guide the school through the predictable turmoil that comes with substantive cultural change. Principals should select guiding coalition members on the basis of how other faculty members respect them. They should choose the people with social capital—the people Patterson et al. (2008) refer to as influencers because their colleagues so trust them that if they support an idea, others will likely support it as well.

Among the guiding coalition’s important tasks are the following.

• Building the shared foundation for the PLC process: Earlier in this introduction (page 4), I describe this task, which includes mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals. Focusing on the four pillars of mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals creates a strong foundation for the PLC process.

• Establishing a common language so people have a shared understanding of key terms: A principal who expects collaborative teams to develop shared norms, a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and common formative assessments will have little impact if those terms mean different things to different people throughout the faculty.

• Building shared knowledge: Once again, building shared knowledge together about the school’s current reality and the most promising, evidence-based practices for improving it is an essential aspect of decision making in a PLC.

• Establishing clarity about the right work: Collaboration is morally neutral. If ambiguity arises over the work that should take place or over quality indicators regarding the work, teams will almost certainly flounder.

• Forming systems to monitor collaborative teams’ progress: By monitoring its collaborative teams, a school can responsively help find solutions when a team struggles.

• Creating a celebratory culture: A celebratory culture should reinforce examples of the faculty’s collective commitments and progress toward the school’s shared vision.

Collaborative teams should not have sole accountability for students and their learning. Leaders should also have accountability—accountability for the teams that work with students to promote their success.

Reciprocal Accountability

Many definitions for the term leadership exist. My colleagues and I prefer this one: leadership is creating the conditions that allow others to succeed at what they are being asked to do (DuFour et al., 2016). This means that central office leaders, principals, and guiding coalition members must commit to reciprocal accountability. To hold teams accountable for engaging in certain processes and completing certain tasks, leaders at all levels must accept their own accountability. This way, they provide teams with the knowledge, resources, training, and ongoing support essential to their success. Effective leaders demonstrate reciprocal accountability when they do the following.

• Assign educators to meaningful teams

• Provide sufficient time to engage in meaningful collaboration

• Establish clarity regarding the work to be done and why it is important

• Monitor and support teams

• Demonstrate a willingness to confront individuals and groups who are not contributing to the collaborative team process

• Celebrate small successes along the way

Assign Educators to Meaningful Teams

We can structure educators into teams in a variety of ways. Vertical teams combine different grade levels, such as a K–2 primary team or a team of junior high and high school band directors. Interdisciplinary teams typically bring together teachers of different subjects for a particular grade level, such as seventh-grade language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies teachers. Access to technology means individuals can also link up with electronic teams, such as a team of all the art teachers in a district.

Research consistently cites that the most effective team structures for improving student achievement feature teachers of the same course or grade level, such as all the algebra teachers or second-grade teachers in a particular school (Gallimore, Ermeling, Saunders, & Goldenberg, 2009; Little, 2006; Robinson et al., 2010; Saphier, King, & D’Auria, 2006; Stigler & Hiebert, 2009; Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). These structures suit the collective inquiry of collaborative teams because members share an inherent interest in addressing the six critical questions of the collaborative team process (see page 6).

Leaders who create artificial teams do damage to the PLC process. We have witnessed principals create the leftover team. For example, a principal may find that almost everyone on the staff fits easily into a course-specific team, but three singleton teachers—a dance instructor, an auto-repair teacher, and a band director—remain unassigned. So he or she asks those three faculty members to form a team, but it remains unclear to both the principal and the team members exactly what the three teachers should accomplish. Leaders should assign every member of a PLC to a team, but each team should serve a clear purpose—to improve student and adult learning. If the optimum team structure isn’t apparent, leaders should engage teachers in a dialogue about possible team structures and get their input on which structure will most benefit them.

Provide Sufficient Time to Engage in Meaningful Collaboration

As my colleagues and I write in Learning by Doing, Third Edition:

Reciprocal accountability demands that leaders who ask educators to work in collaborative teams provide those educators with time to meet during their contractual day. We believe it is insincere for any district or school leader to stress the importance of collaboration and then fail to provide time for it. One of the ways in which organizations demonstrate their priorities is allocation of resources, and in schools, one of the most precious resources is time. Thus, school and district leaders must provide teachers with time to do the things they are being asked to do. (DuFour et al., 2016, pp. 64–65)

Some school and district leaders continue to lament that they cannot find time for teachers to collaborate. No group of educators has ever found time to collaborate; they have to make time to collaborate because they consider meaningful collaboration an absolute priority. The professional literature effectively—and often—addresses the issue of finding time for collaboration, and that literature is readily available for those who have a sincere interest in exploring these alternatives. AllThingsPLC’s (n.d.b) “Tools and Resources” webpage (http://bit.ly/2g9JBLJ) provides different strategies for making time for educator collaboration that do not require additional resources. Readers can go to AllThingsPLC’s (n.d.a) “See the Evidence” webpage (www.allthingsplc.info/evidence) to read about hundreds of schools that have made time for educators to collaborate and have willingly shared their strategies and schedules for doing so.

These first two elements of reciprocal accountability—organizing people into meaningful teams and providing them with ample time to collaborate—are structural issues that effective school leaders can address. Other aspects of reciprocal accountability require more than managerial skill; they require leadership.

Establish Clarity Regarding the Work to Be Done and Why It Is Important

District and school leaders can support the collaborative team process in a PLC by ensuring all team members clearly understand both the nature of the work they need to do and why that work is important. Ineffective or unproductive team meetings create cynicism and only serve to sour teachers’ attitudes toward teaming up while simultaneously reinforcing the norms of isolation so prevalent in our schools (Boston Consulting Group, 2014).

As my colleagues and I write in Learning by Doing:

We have seen schools in which staff members are willing to collaborate about any number of things—dress codes, tardy policies, the appropriateness of Halloween parties—provided they can return to their classrooms and continue to do what they have always done. Yet in a PLC, the reason teachers are organized into teams, the reason they are provided with time to work together, the reason they are asked to focus on certain topics and complete specific tasks is so that when they return to their classrooms, they will possess and utilize an expanded repertoire of skills, strategies, materials, assessments, and ideas in order to impact student achievement in a more positive way.

Therefore, one of the most important elements of reciprocal accountability that district and school leaders must address is establishing clear parameters and priorities that guide teamwork toward the goal of improved student learning. (DuFour et al., 2016, pp. 67–68)

The guiding coalition can foster this clarity by working with teams to establish a timeline for completing certain tasks in the PLC process. This work should provide the rationale behind these important tasks and examples of what quality work looks like. For example, imagine a guiding coalition created the following timeline of four activities that guides the work of collaborative teams.

1. Use our professional development days prior to the start of the school year to create and present our team norms and SMART goals before students arrive at school.

2. By the second week of school, present our list of the essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions students should acquire throughout the school year.

3. By the third week of school, administer a collaborative team–developed common formative assessment.

4. By the fourth week of school, complete our first data analysis of the evidence of student learning from our team-developed common formative assessment.

Note that each activity should result in a product that flows from a collaborative team engaged in the right work. For each product the timeline asks the team to create, the guiding coalition would present both the rationale as to why the product is critical to the team’s work and high-quality examples of that product. My colleagues and I specifically designed Learning by Doing (DuFour et al., 2016) to provide collaborative teams with the rationale behind the different aspects of the PLC process and examples and rubrics to help guide their work. Educators can play an important role in their organization’s success when they not only know how to perform specific tasks but also understand how their work contributes to a larger purpose (DuFour & Fullan, 2013).

Monitor and Support Teams

What leaders pay attention to can powerfully communicate their priorities. Leaders who simply urge teams to “go collaborate,” and then have no process for monitoring the teams, send the message that they don’t really find the teams’ work that important. Furthermore, unless they have a process for monitoring teamwork, leaders put themselves in no position to support a struggling team or to learn from a high-performing team.

However, monitoring and micromanaging are different. Monitoring works best when teachers understand the work that teams need to produce, the expected quality of their work products, and the process for submitting work products to school leaders according to a timeline, as previously described. If a team cannot generate a product or it presents inconsistent work that lacks clearly defined quality expectations, the team needs additional support. Conversely, teams that have no difficulty producing high-quality work according to the agreed-on timeline will benefit from greater autonomy. In high-performing PLCs, collaborative teams are remarkably self-directed.

Establishing team leaders ensures the lines of communication among teams and school leaders remain open. Not only does this promote more widely dispersed leadership, it provides another avenue for school leaders to monitor the work of teams. Principals should meet with team leaders regularly; clarify and rehearse how these leaders can lead their colleagues through the different elements of the PLC process; and share problems, concerns, and successes (Eaker & Sells, 2016).

Effective team leaders can play an important role in developing their colleagues’ self-efficacy. When they do, if the principal and other key staff eventually leave the school, it causes no sense of lost purpose or direction because the school has groomed many leaders who can continue to support the work.

Demonstrate a Willingness to Confront Individuals and Groups Who Are Not Contributing to the Collaborative Team Process

Perhaps the most common reason that leaders fail to effectively communicate their organization’s purpose and priorities is that a disconnect appears between what they say and what they do. James A. Autry (2004), author of The Servant Leader, advises leaders that others in the organization:

Can determine who you are only by observing what you do. They can’t see inside your head, they can’t know what you think or how you feel, they can’t subliminally detect your compassion or pain or joy or goodwill. In other words, the only way you can manifest your character, your personhood, and your spirit in the workplace is through your behavior. (p. 1)

The key to effective communication lies not in the leader’s eloquence but in the congruence between his or her words and deeds. Nothing destroys a leader’s credibility faster than an unwillingness to address an obvious problem that stands in contrast to the organization’s stated purpose and priorities. The very essence of a tight culture is the certainty that we confront any behavior inconsistent with what is tight. I have never found a tight school culture with a principal who lacks a willingness to challenge inappropriate behavior on the part of individuals or groups within the school.

Celebrate Small Successes Along the Way

Every organization will face the challenge of sustaining momentum over time while it implements a comprehensive improvement effort. Experts on the organizational change process offer consistent advice regarding that challenge: plan for frequent celebrations of incremental progress (Amabile & Kramer, 2010; Collins, 2001; Elmore & City, 2007; Heath & Heath, 2010; Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; Kotter & Cohen, 2002; Patterson et al., 2008).

When celebrations continually remind people of the purpose and priorities of their organization, team members will more likely embrace the purpose and work toward the agreed-on priorities. Regular public recognition of specific collaborative efforts, accomplished tasks, achieved goals, team learning, continuous improvement, and support for student learning remind staff of the collective commitment to create a PLC. The word recognize comes from the Latin for “to know again.” Recognition provides opportunities to say, “Let us all be reminded of and know again what is important, what we value, and what we are committed to do. Now, let’s all honor a team or individual in our school who is living that commitment.”

There is a difference between planning for celebration and hoping for something to celebrate. Leaders of the PLC process identify specific benchmarks along the journey and prepare to publicly celebrate those benchmarks. In doing so, they should keep the following four guidelines for celebration in mind (DuFour et al., 2016).

1. Explicitly state the purpose of celebration: Continually remind staff members that celebration represents both an important strategy for reinforcing the school or district’s shared mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals and the most powerful tool for sustaining the PLC journey.

2. Make celebration everyone’s responsibility: Everyone in the organization, not just the administration, has responsibility for recognizing extraordinary commitments. Encourage all staff members to publicly report when they appreciate and admire the work of a colleague.

3. Establish a clear link between the recognition and the behavior or commitment you are attempting to encourage and reinforce: Recognition must specifically link to the school’s or district’s mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals for it to help shape the school culture. The question, What behavior or commitment have we attempted to encourage with this recognition? should have a readily apparent answer.

4. Create opportunities to have many people recognized: Celebration can cause disruptions and detriment if people perceive that recognition is reserved for an exclusive few. Developing a PLC requires creating systems specifically designed not only to provide celebrations but also to ensure that the celebrations recognize many winners.

Can we overdo celebration? Absolutely! We should use the sincerity with which we give recognition for a team or individual as the criterion for assessing the appropriateness of the recognition. A commendation should represent genuine and heartfelt appreciation and admiration. If it does meet that criterion, don’t worry about expressing too much gratitude.

In This Book

Leaders hoping to create a high reliability school must recognize that their challenge does not merely involve putting new structures and strategies in place. They must face their larger challenge of reshaping the school culture and the assumptions, beliefs, and expectations that drive the culture. A growing consensus states that leaders can best lead this cultural transformation and create sustainable school improvement by building educators’ capacity to function as members of a PLC. With a strong PLC process in place, principals and teachers put themselves in a great position to implement the other key elements of a high reliability school.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of high reliability organizations and school leadership, including the early days of school leadership and the characteristics of effective school leaders. It also presents a four-step process for creating leading indicators to establish criteria for school success. These criteria are based on the leading indicators in each level of the HRS model. In all, there are twenty-five leading indicators which form the basis for their respective lagging indicators. Chapters 2–6 cover the five levels of the HRS model: a safe, supportive, and collaborative culture; effective teaching in every classroom; a guaranteed and viable curriculum; standards-referenced reporting; and competency-based education.

More specifically, chapter 2 addresses level 1 of the HRS model—a safe, supportive, and collaborative environment. The leading indicators at this level represent critical actions and initiatives the PLC process should support to create a psychological and operational foundation for effective schooling. Chapter 3 addresses level 2—effective instruction in every classroom. The leading indicators at this level specify 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.