Professional Learning

Communities
Airess Stewart, Katie Jeffrey, Sebrina Shields
Gill 2014:
Elementary ● 4 staff and Principal attended 3 day PLC summer
School: training
● Guiding coalition created
PLC Journey
2015:

● 4 additional staff attended 3 day PLC summer

training

2016:

● 9 additional staff attended 3 day PLC summer

training
 1. What do we expect our students to

What is a Professional learn?

Learning Community? 2. How will we know what they learned?

3. How will we respond when they don’t

Dufour video
learn?

4 guiding questions 4. How will we respond if they already

know it?
PLC Structure

● Each grade level is a team

● The lead from each team is part
of the MTSS team.
● Norms
● Agendas
● Minutes
● Instructional Support Time
 Research Questions

1. To what extent do administrators

foster the school to a culture of
collaboration?

1. To what extent do teachers’ attitudes

impact PLC?

1. How effective is the PLC process in

improving student achievement?
Assumptions and Limitations
Assumptions

● Increase or decrease in NWEA student achievement is highly correlated to PLC effectiveness.

● Reading scores will reflect higher growth and achievement with Instructional Support Time

● All teachers responded to the survey and interview questions honestly and accurately.

Limitations

● One school limits ability to compare to other schools

● Difficult to isolate what actual program, strategy or other variables such as individual teacher

effectiveness, positively correlates to overall student achievement.

 Survey data

● Teacher PLC survey

● Grade level PLC lead interviews
Survey results Demographic data

● Over half of the teachers have

PLC been employed at Gill for over

8 years.

questionnaire ● 70% of the teachers have over

11 years of teaching experience
Teacher questionnaire

Collaboration and
Focus on Learning
Results
Teacher questionnaire open response questions
What do you like best about your PLC? What does your Principal do to
support PLC?
● Most teachers indicated the time to
collaborate, identify student needs ● Most teachers indicated
and share ideas provided time was most
supportive
How could your PLC be improved?

● Most teachers indicated they would

like more time, structured norms
and training on database system
 100% of lead teachers
responded “yes”:
● Do you have professional
learning opportunities for PLC?
● Do you feel your team finds the
PLC Lead Interview PLC process meaningful to
inform your instruction?
● Do you feel PLCs impact student
achievement?
PLC Lead Interview Open Ended Questions

Professional Learning Opportunities:

● PLC Institute Training

● Staff meetings

Impact:

● Bring back new learning

● Keeps us Focused
 The impact of data
Through collaboration:

● Data analysis informs

instructional decisions
● Data demonstrates student
growth and achievement
NWEA data

● School growth report

● School proficiency data by grade
NWEA Reading Fall 2016-Spring 2017
NWEA Growth Data Reading

★ All grades 1-5 met the projected growth in reading

★ 1st and 2nd grade exceeded the projected growth
★ Conditional growth for 1st grade was in the 99th percentile, grew more than
99% of other 1st graders who took the test
★ Conditional Growth for 2nd grade was in the 96th percentile, grew more
than 96% of other 2nd graders who took the test
★ All other grades were closer to average growth at just above 50%
NWEA Math Fall 2016-Spring 2017
NWEA Growth Data Mathematics

★ 3rd and 5th grade did not meet their projected growth
★ 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade did meet their projected growth
★ The Conditional Growth for 1st grade was in the 99th percentile
★ The Conditional Growth for 2nd and 4th grade was above average
★ The Conditional Growth for 3rd and 5th was below average at the 7th and
37th percentile
 Percent of students proficient (60 percentile or higher) for math

Fall 2016 Winter 2017 Spring 2017

1st grade 44% 49% 57%

2nd grade 58% 60% 64%

3rd grade 51% 43% 40%

4th grade 29% 27% 38%

5th grade 46% 35% 43%

Percent of students proficient (60 percentile or higher) for reading

Fall 2016 Winter 2017 Spring 2017

1st grade 36% 52% 62%

2nd grade 55% 67% 76%

3rd grade 46% 50% 47%

4th grade 54% 46% 47%

5th grade 40% 38% 42%

Research To what extent do administrators foster the
Findings school to a culture of collaboration?

★ Our research indicated the administrator

provided:
■ Scheduled meetings
■ Leadership participation
■ PLC training
■ Data Analysis
★ Challenges for Leadership were reported as:
■ Teachers want additional time to
meet within the school day
■ Teacher need more training on the
district database system
 To what extent do teachers’ attitudes impact PLC?

Research Findings The survey results indicates that teachers

viewed the ability to identify student needs,
share ideas and view actual data in PLC’s
favorably. The results also indicated that they
wanted to collaborate during school hours.

How effective is the PLC process in improving

student achievement?

The data showed varied results in student

growth and achievement using NWEA data
from Fall 2016 to Spring 2017. For example, the
average Mean RIT score in reading went from
187 to 201 for grades 1-5, however 3rd and 5th
grade did not meet their projected growth.
Third grade math showed a steady decline in
proficiency over 3 reporting periods.
Conclusion Gill Elementary’s journey toward improvements in
student achievement has successfully included
Dufour’s 3 big ideas.

● a focus on learning
● a collaborative culture and
● collective responsibility with a results-
orientation

However, change is rarely static and efforts to

maintain a collaborative culture relies upon listening
to and responding to all stakeholders. This is one
method to ensure continuous improvement activities
are systemic and sustainable.
Recommendations ● Establish short and long-term meeting
structures to include:
○ Common formative assessments.
○ Yearly goals and set agendas for
each meeting.
○ Additional time for collaboration
inside school hours
● Explore additional data analysis for the
progressive decline in NWEA scoring in
grade 3-5
● Consider collaboration between schools
with NWEA data analysis.
Recommendations ● Discuss possible variables that are contributing

to NWEA scores

● Look beyond DuFour’s guiding questions to

provide additional understanding of growth and

achievement challenges (e.g. root cause analysis)

● Create a book of knowledge to leverage and

document successful strategies that can be used

district-wide.
Implication for 1. Collaboration amongst other
elementary schools in the
Future Research Farmington district.
2. Collaboration with elementary
schools outside the district with
similar populations.
3. Focus on a continued internal
check of PLC efficiency and
effectiveness.
4. Triangulate data outside of the
PLC process to look for other
variables that impact student
growth and achievement.
 For additional information, please
contact us:

Thank you!
airess.stewart@farmington.k12.mi.us

katie.derington@gmail.com

sebrina.shields@gmail.com