Acknowledgments
From Anthony:
To my wife, Kathy, you are a special person. Your care and love for our family are without equal. To my boys, Tony and Andrew, I am proud of you both. No need for awards, trophies, or “winning”—I love you just as you are. To Eric, Troy, and Mark, I consider our collaboration over the past ten years one of the most special times in my life. If this is our last project together, what a ride it has been.
From Troy:
To my wife and kids, Danielle, Adeline, Claire and Owen, I love you more every single day.
From Mark:
To the educators I have the honor of collaborating with every day, I’m so grateful to work among dedicated faculty, sta , and administration who always keep thinking, creating, and looking forward.
From Eric:
To Poppy and Grandma Joan, your unwavering support of and dedication to Twad Fam have been immeasurable.
Although it is widely considered the birthplace of the Professional Learning Community at Work (PLC) movement, Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, is not immune to the di culties and challenges of creating and sustaining a culture of continuous improvement. In fact, after the U.S. Department of Education identi ed the school as “the most recognized and celebrated school in America,” we at Stevenson High School found ourselves stuck in our own version of PLC Lite by the early 2010s. While teachers were working tirelessly on behalf of our students in 2012, many of our instructional, assessment, and grading practices looked very similar to how they did in 2002. To move beyond PLC
Lite, we knew we needed something more than incremental change. We needed to rethink the fundamental assumptions underlying much of our work. What began as an experiment with rethinking and retooling some of our more traditional grading and reporting practices turned into a signi cant leap into what we describe now as evidence-based teaching and learning. Since 2012, we have witnessed a massive shift in our curriculum, instruction, assessment, and grading practices. Most importantly, we have more students learning at high levels, with agency, e cacy, and a strong sense of self, than ever before. is book outlines our journey out of PLC Lite and into evidence-based teaching and learning.
e evidence-based practices you will nd in this book were made possible with innovative thinking, hard work, and relentless dedication to the continuous improvement of Adlai E. Stevenson High School’s faculty and sta . Given the numerous accolades the school has received over the years, one would not be surprised if the faculty and sta lacked a sense of urgency. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. e faculty and sta are constantly searching for and exploring new ideas. ey are open and excited to engage in professional development to push their capacity for helping students learn at deeper and higher levels. e signi cant improvements and changes that we outline in this book would have been impossible without these amazing faculty and sta .
e faculty and sta here at Stevenson are supported by an administrative team that represents the very best that American education has to o er; the shift to evidence-based teaching and learning could not have happened without their leadership. We are also grateful for the support of our current board of education members Amy Neault, Steve Frost, Terry Moons, Gary Gorson, Roni Ben-Yoseph, Don Tyer, and Grace Cao; and former board members Merv Roberts, Bruce Lubin, and Dave Weisberg. Our board of education has long been committed to our mission of success for every student, and our work toward this success is only possible with their visionary leadership and support.
We continue to be grateful to our friends at Solution Tree—Je Jones, Ed Ackerman, Douglas Rife, Claudia Wheatley, Todd Brakke, and everyone who was supportive and patient as we worked to clearly describe Stevenson High School’s journey to evidence-based teaching and learning practices.
Finally, we feel blessed to be able to serve the students of Adlai E. Stevenson High School. e best part of our work is when we have the opportunity to spend time and collaborate with our students. Students bring us a sense of joy and ful llment that only educators can appreciate and understand. As with all our previous books, the authors’ royalties from this project are being donated to the Stevenson High School Foundation, which provides nancial support for students in need, scholarships, and mentoring for rst-generation college students.
Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:
Doug Crowley
Assistant Principal
DeForest Area High School DeForest, Wisconsin
Janet Nuzzie District Intervention Specialist, K–12 Mathematics
Pasadena Independent School District Pasadena, Texas
Christie Shealy
Director of Testing and Accountability Anderson School District One Williamston, South Carolina
Kory Taylor
Reading Interventionist
Arkansas Virtual Academy Little Rock, Arkansas
Ringnolda Jofee’ Tremain Director of Professional Learning Texas Leadership Public Schools Arlington, Texas
John Unger
Principal West Fork Middle School West Fork, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School Rogers, Arkansas
8
About the Authors
Anthony R. Reibel, EdD, is the director of research and evaluation at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. In 2006, he became a Spanish teacher at Stevenson, where he served as a curricular team leader, core team leader, coach, and club sponsor.
In 2010, Anthony received recognition from the state of Illinois, and in 2011, Illinois Computing Educators named him Technology Educator of the Year. He currently sponsors two clubs: (1) KIVA, which gives microloans to entrepreneurs living in areas lacking nancial institutions, and (2) FIRE, which promotes equality and respect among Stevenson students and sta through conversation and advocacy in school and throughout the community.
Anthony is the author and coauthor of seven books on education. Some titles include Embracing Relational Teaching: How Strong Relationships Promote Student Self-Regulation and E cacy; Small Changes, Big Impact: Ten Strategies to Promote Student E cacy and Lifelong Learning; Pro ciency-Based Assessment: Process, Not Product; and Pathways to Pro ciency: Implementing Evidence-Based Grading. Each of these explores the relationship among student e cacy, pedagogy, and learning.
Anthony is also the publisher and chief editor of e Assessor (www.assessormag.com), a publication that features short articles written by teachers and administrators to support conversation about formative assessment.
Anthony completed his doctorate, which studied the e ects of cognitive bias on teachers’ evaluation of student performance, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Troy Gobble is the principal of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He previously served as assistant principal for teaching and learning at Stevenson. Troy taught science for eighteen years and served as the science department chair at Riverside Brook eld High School in Riverside, Illinois, for eight years.
e U.S. Department of Education has described Stevenson as “the most recognized and celebrated school in America”; it is one of only eight schools to have won the U.S. Department of Education’s National Blue Ribbon School Award on ve occasions. Stevenson was one of the rst comprehensive schools that the U.S. Department of Education designated a New American High School as a model of successful school reform. It is repeatedly cited as one of America’s top high schools and the birthplace of the Professional Learning Communities at Work process.
Troy holds a master of science in educational administration from Benedictine University, a master of science in natural sciences (physics) from Eastern Illinois University, and a bachelor of science in secondary science education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Mark Onuscheck is the director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He is a former English teacher and director of communication arts. As director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, Mark works with academic divisions around professional learning, articulation, curricular and instructional revision, evaluation, assessment, social-emotional learning, technologies, and Common Core implementation. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University.
Mark was awarded the Quality Matters Star Rating for his work in online teaching. He helps build curriculum and instructional practices for TimeLine eatre’s arts integration program for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, he is a National Endowment for the Humanities’ grant recipient and a member of ASCD, the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Literacy Association, and Learning Forward.
Mark earned a bachelor’s degree in English and classical studies from Allegheny College and a master’s degree in teaching English from the University of Pittsburgh.
Eric Twadell, PhD, is the superintendent of Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125 in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Prior to his role as superintendent, Eric served Stevenson as a social studies teacher, curriculum director, and assistant superintendent for leadership and organizational development.
Stevenson High School has received ve National Blue Ribbon School Awards from the U.S. Department of Education, and is one of only eight schools to have won this award on ve di erent occasions. Stevenson was also one of the rst comprehensive schools that the U.S. Department of Education designated a New American High School as a model of successful school reform. e U.S. Department of Education has described Stevenson as “the most recognized and celebrated school in America.” In the popular press, Stevenson High School has been repeatedly cited as one of America’s top high schools and the birthplace of Professional Learning Communities at Work.
In addition to his work as a teacher and leader, Eric has been involved in coaching numerous athletic teams and facilitating outdoor education and adventure travel programs. He is a member of many professional organizations, including Learning Forward and ASCD.
Eric earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Loyola University Chicago.
INTRODUCTION
Moving Beyond the Futility of PLC Lite
Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125 in Lincolnshire, Illinois, is a school many educators view as the gold standard for operating as a Professional Learning Community at Work® (PLC at Work). At one time, Stevenson was not a desirable place for parents to send their children to, but by the late 1990s, this school was transformed into one of the most successful and celebrated high schools in America. Under the leadership of Rick DuFour, the school culture shifted from one focused on teaching to one focused on learning. Stevenson’s educators (whom we count ourselves among) stopped working in isolation and began working in collaboration. We stopped measuring e ectiveness based on intentions and instead focused on results. As of 2023, Stevenson has received numerous awards, has repeatedly been designated the best school district in America, and is one of only a select few schools to have received the U.S. Department of Education’s National Blue Ribbon School Award on ve occasions. Because Stevenson was the laboratory for many of the original ideas of the PLC at Work process, the school is also known as the birthplace of the PLC movement.
Although Stevenson achieved signi cant success by the early 2000s, there were times when the cycle of continuous improvement did not produce the expected results. e period of 2005–2010 was one such time. By 2005, Stevenson had all the foundational practices and protocols of a Model PLC, but the improvement cycle seemed to have stalled. ere was a level of comfort with the way things were—and keep in mind, things were good! Teachers met every week in their curricular teams, articulated and taught a common curriculum, gave common formative and summative assessments, made data-based decisions on reteaching, and identi ed students for interventions. In short, we functioned just as you would expect a Model PLC at Work to function. However, a few of us felt that we had become complacent with the way things were, rather than embraced the way things could be.
By 2010, we realized we had an opportunity and responsibility to assess the “current facts and brutal reality” (Collins, 2002) of the teaching and learning process and our PLC at Stevenson High School. While others were recognizing us as a Model PLC at Work school, we felt we needed to dig deeper to move beyond our version of PLC Lite. Our collaborative teams began to look closer at our teaching and learning cycles; our assessment, feedback,
and grading practices; and our tiers of interventions. What we found was that although our practices were very, very good, there was signi cant room for improvement.
e single most important realization we had during this close examination was that our assessment and grading practices were outdated. To be honest, assessing and grading students at Stevenson in 2010 looked a lot like we imagine it did when the school opened in 1965. We needed to change. We needed to shift from our traditional assessment and grading practices, which focused on accountability, punishment, and measures of central tendency, to an assessment and grading framework focused on self-e cacy, improvement, and evidence of learning.
To make this shift, our school’s leadership had to create learning opportunities for our teachers to explore their practices and their students’ challenges and complexities, and we had to create policies and practices grounded in agency development (Bandura, 2023). To do that, we needed to renew our focus and dig much deeper into the three big ideas of the PLC at Work process: (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture, and (3) a results orientation (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). Although we recognized the need for innovation and a shift to more student-centered teaching, learning, assessing, and grading, we were met with a lot of questions about making this change, and some resistance too. Signi cant change can be demanding and challenging, but thoughtful collaboration, a commitment to learning, and a focus on results helped us unite our work and lead our e orts beyond what Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn (2015) describe as outdated instructional assessment and grading practices.
Our traditional practices emphasized teaching explicit knowledge, facilitating teachercentered instructional practices, and focusing on summative assessment results. ese traditional practices were running up against a time when technology and information were more powerful and pervasive than ever. Students carried phones and tablets with more information available on them than they could nd in all the textbooks in the school combined. We realized we needed to be more e ective in meeting the evolving needs of our students. Our challenge as leaders was to strike a balance between the growing need for change and the desire to support and respect the experiences and expertise of our teaching sta . is began Stevenson’s journey to move beyond PLC Lite and dig deep into evidence-based teaching and learning practices by rst going back to the basics and doubling down on uniting the three big ideas of a PLC. We nd these core principles to be the most signicant levers for school change, and they continue to serve as the foundation for our school’s culture of continuous growth and improvement. However, this does not make us immune to the inherent challenges of bringing about change. Even with our strong foundation, the change process can be an emotional roller coaster, often requiring individuals to confront di cult situations, overcome potential stigmatization, and address feelings of helplessness or a lack of control (Zmuda, Kuklis, & Kline, 2004).
Against that backdrop, this book aims to help teachers and leaders interested in moving beyond PLC Lite and learning how the PLC at Work process can support meaningful change and a focus on evidence-based teaching and learning practices utilizing a ten-action framework. roughout the rest of this introduction, we will prime you for the information and
essential actions to come by exploring the persistent knowing-doing gap in schools and the challenges schools must overcome to avoid the trap of PLC Lite. From there, we will o er additional insights about how to approach this book.
A Persistent Knowing-Doing Gap in Schools
In their groundbreaking book e Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, Je rey Pfe er and Robert Sutton (2000) state:
One of the great mysteries in organizational management is the disconnect between what we know and what we do. We have more knowledge than ever before about how to create effective organizations, but we still struggle to put that knowledge into practice. (p. 74)
In other words, when we know what to do, why don’t we do it? ere are many reasons why schools cannot close the knowing-doing gap and move beyond the “futility of PLC Lite” (Reeves & DuFour, 2016). rough our work with schools across North America, we’ve identi ed ve challenges that schools commonly encounter when trying to move beyond PLC Lite: (1) a relentless commitment to the status quo, (2) the absence of a guaranteed and viable curriculum, (3) a failure to accurately de ne success, (4) a focus on “coblaboration” over collaboration, and (5) a focus on inputs more than outputs.
A Relentless Commitment to the Status Quo
ere are many reasons for a culture of complacency, where inaction becomes the norm and new ideas and changes are ignored to keep things the way they are. ese reasons include ignorance, fear, anxiety, lethargy, and apathy (Johnson, 2014), and they can keep people, groups, and institutions unrelenting in their commitment to the status quo.
Many schools of this century operate based on policies and practices that were used in schools over a hundred years prior. Schools need to look, feel, and work very di erent from the schools of the last century. Moving beyond PLC Lite involves recognizing that the traditional glacier-like pace of change in schools needs to be replaced with a process of innovation and iteration that results in a culture of continuous improvement. While we are not advocating for a reckless and haphazard approach to school improvement, we are suggesting that the time is now to make changes that will result in high levels of learning for all students. Moving away from the status quo in school is not easy; this e ort requires patience and persistence. We should heed the advice of our tech industry friends, who seemingly live by the motto, “Fail early, fail often, fail cheap, and fail forward.” PLC Lite is safe. Becoming a fully functioning PLC takes dedication, commitment, and a relentless pursuit of better, as we will show throughout this book.
The Absence of a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
e original sin in most failed PLC e orts is a failure to clearly articulate a guaranteed and viable curriculum. A guaranteed and viable curriculum serves as the foundation of the PLC at Work process (DuFour et al., 2016). In Leaders of Learning, Richard DuFour and Robert J. Marzano (2011) recognize the curriculum gap that exists in many schools and suggest practices to close it:
One of the most powerful things a school can do to help enhance student achievement is to guarantee that specific content is taught in specific courses and grade levels. This might seem obvious, but in actual practice, few districts and schools can make this guarantee. (p. 89)
ey continue:
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.
(DuFour & Marzano, 2011, p. 91)
While it is true that many schools have failed to develop and implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum, we are equally concerned (if not more so) that many schools have developed and implemented a curriculum that is no longer relevant for students in the 21st century. We see many districts and schools prioritize the transmission of information and knowledge and neglect the development of students’ skills, abilities, and understanding (Caplan, 2018; hooks, 2014; Tyler, 2013; Walker, 1971). A focus on content, memorization of facts, or explicit knowledge often occurs at the expense of the development of skills and a focus on implicit and tacit knowledge.
In chapter 4, we outline a skills-based approach to curriculum design, one that uses agencyrelevant skills as its anchor instead of content standards. We show how content standards support the development of enduring, life-ready skills that a student can use to build a sense of competence and agency.
A Failure to Accurately Define Success
When you are moving out of PLC Lite, it can be di cult to measure student success. How do you know and de ne student success and make that success visible? e idea of success is di cult to de ne, and the relevance and equity of success metrics are hotly debated. In a widely cited book, Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson (2011) contend that “the world of education is one in which there is little agreement on what the goals are, let alone the methods that are best-suited to achieve them” (p. 6).
Notably, the most common proxies for success are de ned by standardized tests. According to Adrian Wooldridge (2021), however, standardized tests have historically perpetuated inequality. erefore, it is important to recognize that relying solely on standardized tests to measure success can perpetuate and exacerbate existing disparities in educational outcomes (Wooldridge, 2021). Focusing only on student achievement scores can also have negative consequences for students’ overall growth and well-being (Emdin, 2021; Kohn, 1999, 2004, 2011, 2015; Robinson & Aronica, 2019).
At our own school, we have often thought that if all our students graduated with perfect ACT and SAT scores, had the highest GPA possible, and scored 5s on all their Advanced Placement (AP) exams but we wouldn’t invite them over for Sunday dinner with our grandparents, then we probably hadn’t done our job well enough. In other words, success isn’t just about academic achievement. Christopher Emdin (2021) emphasizes, “Test scores matter, but they don’t matter more than joy. Curriculum matters, but not if it erases the student and kills their passion. is work is about recovering the authentic self that reaches the authentic student” (p. 10).
In our e orts to reimagine our teaching and learning practices, we were focused on developing both smart and good students. Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith (2015) point out that schools and communities tend to be obsessed with standardized testing and metrics, which actually end up hindering students’ intellectual growth, critical-thinking skills, and creativity. is narrow interpretation of achievement that focuses exclusively on grades and test scores can also result in reduced drive, less involvement, and increased stress and anxiety for students (Kohn, 1999; Pink, 2009). at was not the direction in which we wanted to move our school culture. We recognized we didn’t want to be a school that viewed students as numbers instead of unique individuals with di erent needs and strengths (Zhao, 2018b). We wanted to be better, do better, and rethink how we could approach our educational goals more holistically and more thoughtfully.
As a result, we reestablished our belief that schools can and should prioritize students’ skills and social and emotional competencies instead of just test scores (Rose, 2016). We recognized that a comprehensive education prepares students for real-life situations, not just exams and assessments (Emdin, 2016). In this book, we share our approach to evidence-based practices that prioritize student agency, e cacy, and belonging as essential to achieving a student-centered, holistic, and inclusive school.
A Focus on “Coblaboration” Over Collaboration
In our experience, a chief cause of PLC Lite is the failure of some schools to move beyond so-called coblaboration to meaningful collaboration. One reason for this is that many educators synonymously use four terms—(1) congeniality, (2) cooperation, (3) coordination, and (4) collaboration—which mean very, very di erent things. e failure to move toward meaningful collaboration most often results from spending too much time focusing on congeniality, cooperation, and coordination.
In his wonderful book Strengthening the Heartbeat: Leading and Learning Together in Schools, omas J. Sergiovanni (2005) writes:
The emphasis on human relations management has resulted in the value of congeniality becoming very strong in the way schools are managed and led. Congeniality has to do with the climate of interpersonal relationships within an enterprise. When this climate is friendly, agreeable, and sympathetic, congeniality is high. Though congeniality is pleasant and often desirable, it is not independently linked to better performance and quality schooling. (p. 12)
While reading the last line, one might think Sergiovanni (2005) has buried the lead. Yes, congeniality is important. We should be nice, kind, caring, and supportive of one another. And we know school leaders spend considerable time and energy creating a school climate in which congeniality is high. However, Sergiovanni (2005) makes it clear that just because we are nice, kind, caring, and supportive of one another, it doesn’t necessarily mean that students will learn as a result.
In addition to believing that congeniality is important, we also believe that educators must understand the di erences among cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. At a simple level, if we were to identify synonyms for cooperation, coordination, and collaboration, we might consider the following.
• Cooperation sharing
• Coordination planning
• Collaboration interdependence
A school with high levels of cooperation might have teachers sharing lesson plans, sharing ideas and strategies, and even sharing students for intervention. ere is a school culture of openness and sharing when cooperation is high. In a school with high levels of coordination, we see teachers working together to identify essential standards, develop units of study, write common assessments, and plan for interventions. Both these things are important—sharing ideas and strategies and planning together are vital in becoming a Model PLC. We like to think cooperation and coordination are necessary but not sucient for true collaboration.
Collaboration is very di erent. Richard DuFour and colleagues (2016) de ne collaboration as “a systematic process in which teachers work together interdependently in order to impact their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students, for their team, and for their school” (p. 12). In a school where collaboration is running high, we don’t just share ideas and practices, and we don’t just identify essential standards and write common assessments; we actually interdependently analyze the impact and the results of our work. In other words, we focus more on the output than the input.
A Focus on Inputs More Than Outputs
A pervasive symptom of PLC Lite is an aversion to focusing on the actual evidence of student learning. Schools spend far too much time focusing on cooperation and coordination—focusing on the sharing and planning parts of the work. Although this work is important, we know teams that focus more on the outputs (the actual results) of their work will see higher levels of student learning and achievement.
As we work with schools across North America, we see many teachers working in teams to identify essential standards, develop pro ciency scales, create common assessments, and plan for interventions. While all these actions are essential components of the PLC process, they are very much on the input side of the work. We consider them necessary but insufcient to move beyond PLC Lite. We prefer our teams to spend more time on the outputs
of our work, using evidence of student learning and data to improve individual practice, enhance the work of teams, and facilitate student-speci c interventions and supports. By focusing on the actual evidence of student learning, collaborative teams and teachers put themselves in a stronger position to support students and one another, a rm their best practices, and gain new strategies and tools to help students learn at higher levels.
How to Read This Book
Closing the knowing-doing gap and moving beyond PLC Lite are demanding yet doable. Schools face a signi cant challenge in what Jim Collins (2002) describes as the “good to great” problem. To paraphrase Collins (2002), a big obstacle to creating great schools is there are already quite a few good schools. Many schools are comfortable with being good. When things are already good, or even just pretty good, schools often lack the incentive and drive to move beyond PLC Lite. is book is for those teachers and leaders who are interested in disrupting the status quo, busting out of PLC Lite, and persistently pursuing a culture of continuous improvement.
is book serves two purposes. First, it provides teachers and leaders with clear and compelling ideas and strategies for moving beyond PLC Lite. Second, and just as important, it presents a new evidence-based structure for developing a student-centered approach to teaching and learning within a PLC. In this book, we share our experiences, policies, and practices that draw on the work of researchers, authors, and practitioners who have emphasized placing students’ agency, e cacy, and well-being at the center.
Chapters 1 and 2 highlight the signi cance of having a clear change plan and a learning map and breaking the implementation process into manageable stages (actions). e remaining chapters function as a detailed outline of how to develop and implement evidencebased teaching and learning using a ten-action framework.
Chapters 3–11 are each devoted to one essential action for collaborative teams to extend beyond PLC Lite. Chapter 3 explores how to strive for the success of every student by de ning success through the lens of a PLC. Chapter 4 discusses how di erent types of knowledge inform curriculum, explores di erent curriculum structures, and addresses common obstacles to collaborative curriculum design. Chapter 5 guides readers in how to create scales and rubrics that focus on student skills, with a particular emphasis on competency-focused and conventional rubrics. Chapter 6 provides strategies for designing formative and summative assessments and countering assessment models that are unproductive. Chapter 7 discusses how to establish a skills-focused scope and sequence to assist in long-term knowledge retention. Chapter 8 explains the gradual release of responsibility model and why it encourages meaningful participation. Chapter 9 covers both evidence-based grading and reporting systems and the drawbacks to conventional grading practices. Chapter 10 explores how to incorporate a balanced feedback approach that equally considers the teacher’s and students’ perspectives and experiences. Finally, chapter 11 explains how to evaluate diverse student feedback and examines the four critical questions of intervention: (1) What is the student’s current learning story? (2) How can you substantiate their story? (3) Have you
