Achieving Equity and Excellence. Douglas Reeves

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 and passive acceptance by the educators 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,