Using Standards & Collective Efficacy to get On Common Ground

Our school district has been working as a Professional Learning Community (PLC) for a little over a decade and although we still have a continuum of functionality amongst our PLC teams,  I believe we have done a nice job across the board of aligning our curriculum to the state standards.  This step stopped the target from moving and has allowed our PLC discussions to go deeper into the pedagogy through a focus on “how” and “why” versus a focus on “what” we are teaching and “when” are we teaching it.  This week I was reminded of the power of standards when paired with collective teacher efficacy.   

I have reference John Hattie’s work a few times (Confession of a Closet Data Avoider & Supporting Collective Teacher Efficacy) in this blog, but I unexpectedly came across similar concepts through a book study of Rick DuFour’s “On Common Ground”.   On Common Ground is an “older” book in that it was published in 2005.  We used it as a launching pad for shifting toward PLCs in our district in 2006.  At that time each of the teachers in our district read and discussed the concepts embedded in the book and I believe it helped us to get our PLCs off the ground.  The reason I was revisiting  the book this week is because each year I hold a book study of On Common Ground with teachers who are coming into our district for the first time.  We do this so they literally can get on common ground with their new PLC teams in the district.   This month’s chapter focused on standards.

I believe it is safe to say that standards are important, but especially so when you are trying to minimize the educational lottery that could take place if we are not careful.  One quick example:  In 1999, before standards, I moved to Aurora High School (OH) after teaching for seven years prior.  I joined two other teachers in the “Biology Department” and enjoyed working with the team.  However, one of the teachers loved plants and so spent a considerable time in class discussing Botany, but he did not believe in Evolution and as a result didn’t touch the topic.  A second teacher in the department loved the Theory of Evolution and dove deep into the topic while avoiding plants because he thought they were boring.  Meanwhile, I covered both Botany and Evolution in my classes but not nearly as deep as the other two members of our department.  At the end of the year you could have a conversation with any of our students and easily determine which one of us the students had based on their understanding of these two topics.  It was literally an educational lottery as to which Biology curriculum you received based on which teacher you were assigned.  Standards have helped to eliminate this lottery, but at the same time have led to another problem of teachers feeling the pressure to rush through content to cover all the standards by the end of the year.  In our review of On Common Ground this week, we were able to discuss some strategies the book suggests for avoiding the trap of and pressure from rushing through the curriculum in order to reach all the standards.  

When faced with an inordinately large number of standards to “cover”, it is important to be able to identify the key standards (power standards) that all students should have after completing the course.  On Common Ground contains three key questions to ask yourselves (PLC) when trying to identify these power standards:

1. Does this standard have endurance?
2. Does this standard have leverage?
3. Is this standard needed for the next level?

Endurance refers to the idea that the concept embedded in the standard is going to have a lasting effect on the student long after the student learned the concept. In short, is it foundational?  Leverage asks can the concept addressed in the standard be connected to other standards?  It is more broad in its impact where endurance tends to be more deep within a topic.  “Needed for the next level” address those standards which contain concepts that build toward other concepts found in standards to come.  Asking these three questions in your PLC while reviewing your respective standards will help to focus your time, energy, and talents on what the students need most.  

However, I believe it is important to emphasize,  the power behind this idea is the fact that teachers decide together within their PLCs.  The impact comes from believing that working together to help all of our students (collective efficacy) can make a difference and that can only take place when we discuss and debate these three questions, as applied to our standards, as a PLC team.  “Accountability systems must focus not only on what students achieve, but also on how the adults in the system influenced that achievement” (DuFour, 2005, p.61).  This is a concept that works in 2017 as much as it did in 2005 and it is important to constantly revisit in order to stay on common ground as we continue to work together to use standards as our framework to help all of our students grow as learners.