To prepare:Review the following:Chapter 11 of the course textChapter 6 of the Mandinach and Jackson (2012) textThe Introduction and Chapter 1 of the DuFour and Fullan (2013) textThe article by Dunn, Airola, Lo, & Garrison (2013) regarding how collaborative inquiry plays in the decision-making processChapter 4 of the Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2015) text, reflecting on how andragogical practices should be used to develop a data cultureTo submit:Analyze the relationship between the establishment of a data culture and the use of collaborative inquiry. In your analysis, explain how, as a CIA leader, you would establish a data culture. What andragogical strategies should be employed? How does this relationship drive learning within a classroom through differentiation? Include definitions of key terms, citations, and examples to illustrate the relationship.Length: 4 to 6 pages
usw1_eddd_8051_module04_dufour_introduction.pdf
usw1_eddd_8051_module04_dufour_chapter01.pdf
becoming_data_driven.pdf
usw1_eddd_8051_module04_knowles_chapter04.pdf
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INTRODUCTION
Systemic PLCs
Rick DuFour has spent a professional lifetime showing what well-implemented
professional learning communities look like, how to create them, and why they
are good for students and teachers. Hundreds of schools have experienced signifi
cant gains in student achievement by embracing the PLC process (as documented
on allthingsplc.info). In 2011, three of the four finalists for national superintendent
of the year in the United States attributed their district’s success in raising student
achievement to the PLC at Work™ process that Rick created with his colleagues
Robert Eaker and Rebecca DuFour. He asserts that the best hope for sustained
and substantive school improvement is to develop the capacity of educators to
function as members of a PLC.
Michael Pullan has devoted his distinguished professional career to the explo
ration of how to best bring about meaningful change in schools, districts, and
the educational system as an entity. Combining a focus on the moral imperative
with how to change whole systems, Michael has helped lead large-scale success
ful reform in several countries.
In one of his latest works, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in
Every School, Michael and his coauthorAndy Hargreaves (2012) acknowledge
the value of well-implemented PLCs. But they also observe that, too often,
PLC strategies “have been imposed simplistically and heavy-handedly by over
zealous administrators” (p. 128), that PLCs are sometimes viewed more favor
ably by those at the top (administrators) than they are by those on the ground
(teachers), and that “the current PLC movement should be reconfigured and
reconsidered” (p. 136).
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CULTURES BUILT TO LAST
With this book, Cultures Built to Last: Systemic PLCs at Work™, the two of
us have teamed up in an effort to stress our continuing support for the PLC
process, but we also recast PLCs from just another attractive innovation for
individual schools to the central instrument for changing the culture of the
education system: district-, state-, and nationwide. An orientation and commit
ment to whole-system reform are especially important for PLCs because they
started as-and it is easy for them to be stuck at-being an individual-school
phenomenon. To make PLCs systemic, leaders at all levels must see the strategy
as tantamount to changing the culture of the system. They must abandon the
perception that PLCs represent a program to be implemented and recognize
that the PLC process is a cultural transformation that has lasting value.
The Challenge of Cultural Change
Structural change deals with p olicies, programs, rules, and procedures. A
characteristic of structural change, one that political and educational leaders
often find attractive, is that these changes can be mandated. A state govern
ment can increase graduation requirements, adopt the C ommon Core State
Standards, or increase the number of required school days in a calendar year.
A district can move its high schools to a block schedule, adopt a new language
arts program, or require students to wear school uniforms as a matter of fiat.
Unlike structural change that can be mandated, cultural change requires
altering long-held assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and habits that represent
the norm for people in the organization. T hese deeply held but typically unex
amined assumptions help people make sense of their world. More simply put,
culture is just “the way we do things around here.” Systemic implementation
of the PLC process requires changing the way things have typically been done
at all levels.
Two things are true about cultural change: it is absolutely doable, but it is
also undeniably difficult. Factors that contribute to the difficulty include the
following:
•
It requires significant changes to traditional schooling practices that
have endured for over a century. In particular, it changes the way
that just about everyone relates to each other in the school and across
schools and the system.
•
It is certain to create conflict.
Introduction
•
•
It is multifaceted. Leaders do not have the luxury of focusing on a
single aspect of the organization that requires attention.
It is a heuristic process of trial and error. There is no formula to be fol
lowed that guarantees the desired outcomes. Much of cultural change
involves working through complexity by finding out what is working
and what isn’t, and by making adjustments based on the findings. The
good news is that there are dear ideas for guiding the process.
It never ends. Creating the commitment to continuous improvement
inherent in the PLC process means you never “arrive.”
But, although we acknowledge the difficulty of cultural change, we are
convinced that unless leaders recognize the need for whole-system reform
aimed at changing the very culture of the system, schools will be unable to
meet the challenges they confront. Furthermore, even those individual schools
that have implemented the PLC process successfully will find it difficult to
sustain the process unless the larger system provides a more positive and sup
portive context.
On the other hand, PLCs as cultural change are exciting for people and can
get initial results in fairly short order. They unleash energy and draw in the
vast majority of people who begin to make fundamental changes never before
thought possible.
When the PLC process drives an entire system, participants come to have
a sense of identity that goes beyond just their own piece of the system. They
identify in palpable ways with the overall organization, unleashing the energy
of mutual allegiance and competition for the common good. This “systemness”
exists in the hearts and minds of the people working together for the better
ment of the system and is a defining characteristic of the culture.
So to be explicitly overt regarding our purpose in writing this book, we hope
to convince readers of three things:
L If the PLC process is going to impact education beyond the individ
ual school or isolated district, the process must be the driving force
of the entire system. It is time for PLCs to go big!
2. The PLC process is just that-a process, not a program. Educators
don’t “do PLC” one year and then move on to something else the
following year. They will not get the lasting benefits from PLCs
until they learn to implement the process deeply and widely as a
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CULTURES BUILT TO LAST
4
fundamental change in the culture of schools and school systems.
We will elaborate on this distinction between process and program
throughout the book.
3. Every person in the system has an obligation to be an instrument for
cultural change-rather than waiting for others to make the neces
sary changes.
By system, we mean multiple schools and communities that are tied together
within a single authority. The school district is the minimum size for us, but
increasingly we mean all the districts in a given province or state, and in some
cases, we mean the entire country. If the overall system is not the focus of ongo
ing improvement, it will be extremely difficult for schools or districts to sustain
continuous development.
Why We Need Systemic PLCs
At a time when the link between education and lifetime opportunity is stron
ger than ever before, the United States continues to score low on measures of
education performance, and the gap between high and low performance is grow
ing. The United States scores twentieth or worse among the thirty-four countries
that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development. In addition, studies show that American students are increasingly
bored as they move up the grade levels. A study by Lee Jenkins (2012) found that
95 percent of kindergarteners like school, but by grade 9, this percentage has
decreased to 37. The news is not much better for teachers. A 2012 MetLife
Survey (Markow & Pieters, 2012) shows that teachers are becoming increasingly
dissatisfied with their jobs, with almost one in three teachers contemplating
leaving the profession. Equally shocking is the rapidity of the decline. The sur
vey found that 39 percent of teachers in 2012 were satisfied compared to 62
percent only two years earlier. We have to contemplate what kind of places our
schools really are if so many people would rather be somewhere else.
PLCs can play a central role in dramatically improving the overall perfor
mance of schools, the engagement of students, and the sense of efficacy and job
satisfaction of educators. Furthermore, this improvement can
Changing culture
occur not just in isolated individual schools, but across entire
in systemic ways
districts,
states, and provinces. To do this, leaders must grasp
is at the heart of
the underlying principles of PLCs and realize that changing
any successful
culture in systemic ways is at the heart of any successful large
large-scale
education reform.
scale education reform.
Introduction
Why Systemwide Reform Is Best
In the late 1970s and 1980s, researchers Ron Edmonds, Wilbur Brookover,
Larry Lezotte, Michael Rutter, and others presented evidence that some schools
were significantly more effective than others in helping students learn when
external factors such as the socioeconomic status or family background of stu
dents were held constant. The focus of their research was the individual school,
and they concluded that the school, rather than the district, should serve as
the primary unit for reform. In fact, Lezotte (2011) acknowledged that early
in their research, he and his colleagues leading the effective schools movement
concluded that the district was “irrelevant” when it came to promoting effective
practices in schools. They pointed to the fact that, while a district typically pro
vided similar policies, programs, materials, and resources to all of their schools,
some of the schools in the district were highly effective and some were not.
Their conclusion reflected popular opinion at the time: the central office has
little impact on student achievement.
Over time, Lezotte and his colleagues changed their view. They recognized
that without central-office support, other schools in a district were unable to
learn from an effective school. Furthermore, the effective school was unlikely
to sustain a commitment to continuous improvement. As Lezotte (2011) notes:
If creating and maintaining schools as effective isn’t a districtwide priority,
the school will likely not be able to maintain its effectiveness status. Without
broader based organizational support, school effectiveness tends to depend
too heavily on the heroic commitment of the school leader or only a few staff.
We have [seen] numerous cases where the principal of any effective school
moved on for one reason or another and was replaced by someone who did
not share the passion, vision or values. When this happened the school usu
ally, and quickly I might add, returned to its earlier state. (p. 15)
Numerous other studies have now affirmed that an effective central office
can play a major role in improving schools throughout the system. When
Robert Marzano and Tim Waters (2009) conducted one of the largest-ever
quantitative research studies on superintendents, they found a statistically
significant relationship between district leadership and student achievement.
Another study (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010), funded by
the Wallace Foundation, demonstrated the link between effective school leader
ship and established the vital role of the central office in creating the conditions
that promote and support such leadership at the school level.
5
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CULTURES BUILT TO LAST
We embrace the premise that districts can support and sustain higher levels
of learning throughout all of their schools, not only because of the research base,
but also because we have repeatedly witnessed it in the real world of education.
•
How did Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125 in
Lincolnshire, Illinois, become one of the highest-performing districts
in the United States, and then continue to improve student achieve
ment each year for over a quarter of a century under the leadership
of four different superintendents?
How did Sanger Unified School District in California, located in the
congressional district with the highest level of poverty in the United
States, move from one of the first districts in the state assigned into
program improvement because of low student achievement to a dis
trict that now exceeds state goals and has become a national model
for districtwide reform?
•
How did Schaumburg District 54 in Schaumburg, Illinois, increase
the percentage of its students demonstrating proficiency on the state
assessment from 75 percent to over 90 percent in five years? How did
this district, where no school had ever helped 90 percent or more of
its students achieve proficiency in mathematics and language arts,
transform itself into a system where nineteen of its twenty-seven
schools achieved this benchmark goal in just a few years?
How did Whittier Union High School District in California steadily
improve student achievement in all of its schools at the same time
the percentage of its students living in poverty skyrocketed from 40
percent to 80 percent?
•
How did Blue Valley School District in Kansas move student achieve
ment from good to great-and then sustain greatness year after year?
In each case, district leaders maintained a commitment to and focus on build
ing the individual and collective capacity of educators throughout the district. In
each case, the district provided educators with the ongoing clarity and support to
help them succeed at what they were being asked to do. In short, they worked to
ensure that every school in their districts was functioning as a PLC.
It is revealing that successful districts-those effective at districtwide reform
within all of their schools-not only have used PLC principles in their reform,
but have also tended to be committed to larger-scale reform efforts within their
Introduction
states. This is a crucial point. Successful districts think bigger-beyond their
boundaries-and could become great resources for statewide reform. Indeed,
our message is that the entire system-whole-system reform-must become
the focus of future change efforts.
There are fewer examples of statewide or provincewide reform efforts involv
ing all the schools and districts in the system. The Wallace Foundation study
(Louis et al., 2010) concluded that few states in the United States had devel
oped comprehensive approaches to education reform, that they tended to focus
on mandates rather than capacity building, and that they offered very lim
ited guidance for specific approaches to improving teaching and learning. On
the other hand, a series of reports on the most effective school systems in the
world conducted over several years by Sir Michael Barber, Mona Mourshed,
and Chinezi Chijioke (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, 2009; Mourshed, Chijioke, &
Barber, 2010) for the McKinsey Group identified provincial and national poli
cies that led to higher levels of student learning.
Ontario provides one case study. From 2003 to the present, the province has
engaged in deliberate strategies for system reform across its 72 districts, which
include 4,000 elementary schools and 900 secondary schools. A focus on learn
ing, capacity building, wise and thorough use of data, and identifying and
spreading good practice are all integrated in the Ontario strategy. Fostering
leadership at all levels has been a core part of Ontario’s success that includes a
substantial increase in literacy learning across the 4,000 schools, as well as major
gains in high school graduation rates-from 68 percent to 83 percent in the 900
secondary schools (Pullan, 2013a).
Delaware offers an example of a statewide attempt to implement the PLC
process on a systemic basis. In 2009, then state Secretary of Education Lillian
Lowery worked with the state’s forty-one Local Education Agencies (LEAs)
to gain support for building educator capacity by using PLCs as a cornerstone
of Delaware’s educational agenda. The commitment to PLCs was evident
in Delaware’s application for a Race to the Top (RTTT) award in 2010. It
stipulated that the state’s instructional improvement system would include
“collaborative planning time in which teachers analyze student data, develop
plans to differentiate instruction in response to data, and review the effective
ness of prior actions” (Delaware Department ofEducation [DDOE], 2010, p.
c27, emphasis in original). The application also explained that the system was to
“provide teachers, principals, and administrators with meaningful support and
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CULTURES BUILT TO LAST
8
actionable data to systematically manage continuous instructional improvement,
including such activities as instructional planning, gathering information with
the support of rapid-time reporting; using this information to inform decisions
on appropriate next instructional steps; and evaluating the effectiveness of the
action taken. Such systems promote collaborative problem solving and action
planning” (DDOE, 2010, p. c27).
The application also stipulated specific action steps that would be taken to
support PLCs. Included among those steps were the following (DDOE, 2010):
•
All core subject teachers of grades 3 through 12 would be organized
into “small relevant groups such as six third- and fourth-grade teach
ers” to work collaboratively toward “instructional improvement.”
• These collaborative groups would receive at least ninety minutes of
collaborative time per week, and teachers would be required to attend.
• Collaborative time would be considered sacred and not used for other
purposes.
• Teachers in these groups would examine achievement data on their
own students and use the data to inform, adjust, and improve their
instruction and accelerate student learning.
The state would provide data coaches for two years to support
schools throughout the state in implementing the initiative and
building their internal capacity to continue creating a collaborative
culture focused on evidence of student learning.
School administrative teams and data coaches would meet monthly
to discuss the status of the work.
•
Administrators would take steps to remediate a teacher or teachers
who did not participate in the collaborative team or were disruptive
to the team process.
The application articulated three specific goals the state hoped to achieve by
providing educators with time to collaborate:
I. Creating cultural acceptance for sharing data among peers and
leaders
2. Helping educators build the necessary technical skills to access and
analyze achievement data from a variety of sources
Introduction
3. Ultimately to improve the content knowledge and pedagogical skills
of teachers so they could revise instructional strategies in response to
evidence of student learning (DDOE, 2010)
When Delaware was named one of the first two states to receive the RTTT
award, every district and charter school in the state, as well as their education
associations, agreed to implement common weekly planning time for at least
core content teachers. Furthermore, the department stipulated that the col
laborative team meetings were to be considered sacred time that would never
be pre-empted by other meetings or activities. State and district leaders were
convinced, however, that providing teacher teams with coaching and building
the capacity of school leaders to effectively coach were critical to the success of
the initiative. So DDOE contracted with an education software and assessment
company to provide twenty-nine data coaches to support schools throughout the
state. These coaches not only modeled effective coaching language and strate
gies but also supported professional learning by facilitating nonthreatening data
conversations with both t …
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