Aligning School Districts as PLCs

In order for a professional learning community to achieve its full potential, all levels districtwide must align with the three big ideas: ensuring a focus on learning, building a collaborative culture, and establishing a results orientation. This book breaks down the complex process of aligning the work of central office staff, building leadership, and teachers to increase student achievement. In order for a learning community to best deliver upon its full potential, all levels and all roles districtwide need to become aligned around the three big ideas of a PLC: ensuring a focus on learning, building a collaborative culture, and establishing a results orientation. For each of these big ideas, there are certain non-negotiables things around which there must be common agreement and expectations. For the first big idea, ensuring a focus on learning, there are three non-negotiables: a guaranteed and viable curriculum, a balanced and coherent system of assessment, and a schoolwide pyramid of interventions. For building a collaborative culture, the non-negotiables are a shared mission, vision, values, and goals; high-performing collaborative teams, and intentional collaboration. And for the third big idea, a results orientation, the non-negotiables are establshing a data mindset; data management, collection, and analysis; and data-based action to improve results. In aligning around the non-negotiables, there are four essential elements to consider the definition of district roles (strategic, tactical, and operational), communication using data, loose and tight leadership, and the so-called alignment constants. The alignment constants are certain non-negotiables that are identical for each big idea (policies, practices, and procedures; appraisal systems; resources and training, and monitoring and reporting). Professional learning communities have shown clear and demonstrated success. Now the challenge is to replicate those successes on a larger scale in many school districts and across multiple schools. This approach of bringing the non-negotiables of the three big ideas into alignment across all three roles districtwide with respect to the essential elements has the potential to deliver PLCs on that larger scale The case for districtwide alignment Alignment's essential components Aligning to a focus on learning Aligning to a culture of collaboration Establishing a results orientation An alternative to dead reckoning: assessing PLC alignment.