School Reform Several Months Ago,

School Reform

Several months ago, our school developed a mission and vision statement based on Richard DeFour's principles of a professional learning community. According to De Four, a well-known educator and school administrator, it is necessary to "focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results." In learning communities, everyone involved has a clear sense of the mission to accomplish and a shared vision and work collaboratively to accomplish their aims.

Now I would like to go the next step and introduce DeFour's approach into the science and safety committees. DeFour notes that as the school begins to implement the mission and vision, every person involved with this process must explore three crucial questions:

What do we want all students to learn?

How will we know when every student has acquired this learning?

How is our response when a student has difficulty learning?

He stresses that the answer to the third question is what separates learning communities from traditional schools. In a traditional school, a teacher leads a unit to the best of his or her ability. At the conclusion of the unit, some students have not mastered the essential outcomes. The teacher would like to help those students, but knows it is necessary to move forward and cover the course content. If the teacher uses instructional time to assist those who have not learned, the other students suffer; if the teacher introduces new concepts, the struggling students fall farther behind. Almost invariably, it is up to the teachers, who vary widely in their response. Some determine that the struggling students should transfer to a less rigorous course or be considered for special education. Some lower their expectations and adopt less challenging standards for these students. Some look for ways to assist them out of class. Some just let them fail.

DuFour says that this scenario is very different in a professional learning community. The teachers realize the incongruity between their commitment to ensure every student learns and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some do not learn. As a collaborative team, the staff addresses this discrepancy by designing strategies to ensure that struggling students receive support needed, regardless of the teacher. The professional learning community quickly identifies those students who need additional time and support. Based on intervention rather than remediation, they develop a plan that provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention and remedial courses. Further, rather than "inviting" students to seek help, the systematic plan "requires" them to receive additional assistance until mastering the concepts.

For example, at an Illinois school, the collaborative team determined that every three weeks, each student receives a progress report. Within the first month of school, new students learn that if they are not doing well, they will receive a wide array of immediate interventions. First, the teacher, counselor, and faculty advisor separately talk with the student to resolve the problem. The school also notifies the parents about the concern. In addition, the school offers the student a pass from study hall to a school tutoring center to get additional help in the course, with an older student and/or advisor.

Counselors make weekly checks on any student who falls short at the end of six weeks. The student is assigned to a daily guided study hall with 10 or fewer students, where the supervisor communicates with classroom teachers to learn what homework each student needs to complete and monitors its completion. Parents attend a meeting and the student, parents, counselor, and classroom teacher sign a contract clarifying what each party will do to help the student meet standards.