Abstract
This case was developed for use with future school leaders in an educational setting. There are several topics of discussion that can be developed, including but not limited to policy implementation, the efficacy of professional learning communities, and improving student learning outcomes. The setting is a solidly performing middle school in the third year of implementing a new policy of common assessments through a professional learning committee model. Data are presented about the students, the district, and the teachers involved. Students must support the main player in the story: a new principal who is about to begin work with an established math department in the midst of collaborative crisis.
Keywords
Case Narrative
Principal O’Bryan glanced around the room, catching the eye of one or two teachers that he had already met with . . . This first staff meeting was an important opportunity for him. The school was in Year 3 of a reform process and here he was—the new guy in town, the new principal of Median Middle School. He had thought carefully about how to articulate his visions for the next year, and how to begin building the relationships he knew were needed for him to be a successful leader. Now that moment was here.
Background
Median Middle School is located in a mid-sized college town. It is one of two middle schools in the district. The student population at Median will be approximately 600 this year, with 39% of the population on free/reduced lunch. The population is primarily White (77%), with 4.4% Hispanic, 5.4% Asian, 5.8% multiracial, and 6.8% Black. The presence of the college brings diversity to the town; at the same time, 20% of the population is rural. There are relatively few attendance issues; discipline referrals are on average similar to the other district middle school. However, a recent study did suggest that there are racial discipline disparities in both of them. The school district has a strong history of performing above the state and national average on its mandated achievement test.
Median has consistently made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Yet the disaggregated data reveal that as in much of the country, there are underserved populations, which include those on free/reduced lunch and the minority populations with the exception of Asian students. Accountability pressures were recently magnified in the district, when the state legislature passed a law requiring all teacher evaluations and raises to be directly tied to student data. As a response to these pressures and in keeping with the school district’s overall mission of empowering all students to maximize their educational success, the district embraced the philosophies of both DuFour and Marzano in 2010, and began to work toward establishing a collaborative culture across the school district through the implementation of professional learning communities (PLCs).
The PLC process is centered on three key ideas. First, it embraces the notion that all students can learn, and learn at high levels. Second, to ensure this learning takes place, teaching must become a more collective and collaborative process. And finally, this process must include the constant evaluation of data—evidence of student learning, as well as evidence of teacher and policy efficacy (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006; DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Marzano, 2007).
Approximately 60% of the staff has received training in implementing the PLC process. The English department began this process a full year before any other department, and has made great strides in all areas: curriculum mapping, preparing common assessments, collaborating on planning, reviewing student data, and collaborating on Response to Intervention (RTI). All seven English teachers profess support for the process but acknowledge it has meant a loss of independence that is sometimes missed. No other department is even close to this level of compliance with the key factors that are linked to successful PLCs, however. There are varied levels of satisfaction and disgruntlement across the school.
The primary all-school responses in connection to the district’s clear direction are the following “non-negotiables”: (a) students must be given full credit for all work completed regardless of timeliness; (b) Lunch-In has been instituted as a consequence of late work, wherein students are assigned to a quiet lunch only on Tuesdays or Thursdays if they are found to be missing two or more assignments on those particular days; (c) departments must work together to plan interventions and enrichments for Study Hall Or More (SHOM) that is held twice a week for 35-min periods.
These “non-negotiables” are not universally accepted. Some teachers have ceased to give any homework, as they feel it has been devalued by the “full-credit at all times” policy. Others are intensely frustrated by the high percentage of students who turn in every assignment on the last day of the grading period. Lunch-In has not proven a deterrent, and in fact, the number of Lunch-In students has increased each grading period; some teachers want Lunch-In offered daily, but few are willing to commit to a daily updated grade book to accommodate it. The two SHOM sessions are constant sources of stress, as the core subject teachers battle over who gets what struggling students while the students who need enrichment tend to instead sit and read books or play on the computer.
The school is officially about to begin the third year of implementation of the PLC process. Mrs. Rose, the former principal, left unexpectedly at year-end when her husband’s promotion involved a move several states away. Mrs. Rose had been a staunch supporter of the PLC process as a whole, but had some leadership characteristics that had muddied the waters for struggling departments. To further complicate Principal O’Bryan’s assimilation, one of Median’s two existing assistant principals had applied for the job, but it was ultimately given to an outsider: O’Bryan. As English and math are often in the hot seat based on accountability measures, we will consider Median’s math department more closely to more fully understand the climate of the school. We focus on math because the English department is doing better with this process, and because these two disciplines are currently the two that are counted in the school performance grades. The math department has had relative success in terms of improving test scores but faces several internal problems to be able to move forward as a collaborative team.
The Challenge
The Median Middle School math department has had shared prep time, the same lunch hour, and weekly PLC meeting time for 2 years. They have established and reviewed norms regularly. Each level of math—and there are five levels—is taught by at least two teachers. This was one of the first changes that the math department made to facilitate the PLC process. The math department participated fully in curriculum mapping at the district level and preparing common assessments at the individual team level. However, the amount of collaboration on planning, reviewing student data, and RTI varies greatly from team to team. Notably, there is no consensus on the value of or the benefits of a PLC and the embedded processes.
Former Principal Rose facilitated her school’s PLCs from a close distance, believing she had fulfilled DuFour and Marzano’s main guidelines for creating a collaborative culture. She had established logical content-related PLCs. She ensured common planning time and shared lunch hours. After some early professional development opportunities, however, the school’s content-based PLCs were expected to take the lead. Few specific tasks were assigned; each team was expected to be consistently reviewing student data and making instructional improvements as needed.
Median does have a cross-curricular leadership team. It consists of one member from each department, two administrators, and two guidance counselors. The members of this leadership team are volunteers; they received minimal or no additional training. There is little communication between the leadership team and the overall staff, and the purpose of this leadership team is unclear.
The Characters
The math department at Median Middle School consists of five teachers. The department has created several sub-group PLCs, based on the content taught. There is a team composed of the three teachers who teach seventh-grade math, the three teachers who teach eighth-grade math, the two teachers who teach advanced seventh-grade math, the two teachers who teach algebra, and the three teachers who teach remediation classes. This teaming is new. In prior years, it was often the case that only one teacher covered all of the regular eighth-grade classes, as an example.
One team in particular did not embrace many of the principles of the collaborative process. Two of the three members worked well together and planned together, while the third, a more abrasive personality with a different belief system about how children learn, worked alone. Common assessments became meaningless because the team did not analyze the data.
Every time we try planning together, he starts on his soap box about vertical alignment. We can never have a meaningful productive conversation because he just keeps banging that drum. So, sure, we do our common assessments—but that’s about it. That has to be enough.
They never show me their data after our common assessments. I am sure my scores are often higher than theirs but I can’t prove that.
It is hard for me to collaborate with someone who focuses so much on teaching to the test. I don’t want to be that teacher.
In the past, when symptoms of this conflict heightened within the math department, Principal Rose would speak with each member individually, clarifying their perceptions. She would encourage the department to find a way to compromise even if it meant harsh words came first: “Sometimes you have to break it all apart to rebuild it correctly.” Then, several weeks later, she would abruptly deliver a list of specific requirements for the math department to deliver, complete with due dates.
I am now convinced that you are one of the more dysfunctional teams here at Median. In two weeks, each team must provide me with evidence of common planning, common assessment, and team data analysis.
Each individual team adequately met these assignments but did not expand or change any team’s overall operating structure.
Each teacher’s individual evaluation of the current status of implementing the processes of PLCs is summarized here.
Mr. Martin: “Where is the student’s responsibility in all that we are trying to do here?”
Mr. Martin, age 42, has been teaching at Median since he graduated from the local teaching college 20 years ago. He is skeptical of the process. He does believe that he has experienced professional growth but feels strongly that many of the results of this process (both intended and unintended) are producing irresponsible students. He is concerned that the school has done nothing to provide additional supports for intentional non-learners and additional challenges for advanced students—at the same time, he does believe that the PLC process has been found to benefit struggling learners.
Mrs. Pratt: “I think all of this collaboration is just great.”
Mrs. Pratt, age 38, is in her third year of teaching after a first career in nursing. She is highly optimistic about the value of PLCs. She believes the math department is moving quickly into a sustaining mode. She feels the process greatly benefits her personally and students as well. She is less confident of the status of the school and would like to see better communication from the school’s leadership PLC team. She was also frustrated by Principal Rose’s mid-year mandates as she felt they undermined the collaborative process. However, Mrs. Pratt is part of a team that did not collaborate completely. Her perceived benefits come from working with only one other team member, Mr. Dirk, to the exclusion of Mr. Gerry.
Mr. Gerry: “How can I collaborate with people who ignore me? Where I come from . . .”
Mr. Gerry, age 33, is in his fifth year of teaching at Median having taught for 7 years first in a neighboring state. He believes that both the district and the school undermine the math department’s ability to succeed. There has been decreasing support for all middle school curricular planning meetings, and even less for vertical alignment. Mr. Gerry believes strongly that these two measures must be supported at the district level for any individual school to fulfill its commitment to every student. In addition, the SHOM enrichment/intervention schedule has been problematic in his opinion, as many teachers want to see the same students at this time. The school plan has simply alternated priority by discipline, which some teachers (Mr. Gerry included) believe is not reasonable given the heavy emphasis on English and math in all things tested. Finally, Mr. Gerry feels that he primarily innovates alone, and is therefore not experiencing the benefits of a collaborative environment.
Mrs. Jones: “I don’t feel that the PLC process is the solution—I love more collaboration, but there are many different ways to innovate and we are spending too much time looking at data instead of working with students.”
Mrs. Jones, age 42, is in her eighth year of teaching after a prior career in marketing. She believes that while collaboration is valuable, the added tasks that keep coming as a result of the PLC process are becoming distracting. She feels that she should be able to share insights and concerns with her individual teams without a protocol, for instance. She is also concerned because the two teams that she is a part of both function extremely differently. While she is not personally a fan of standardization, she recognizes that for the collaborative process to help teachers improve (thereby improving student learning), the process must be more uniform.
Mr. Dirk: “I’m behind the concept of PLCs, but sometimes someone just makes it too difficult to really collaborate with that person.”
Mr. Dirk, age 29, is in his seventh year of teaching (all 7 at Median). He truly wants to believe in the value of collaboration. He likes to be seen as an innovator, and feels that trying out new strategies in the classroom is what makes him a better teacher. He is not confrontational, and tends to be passive in team meetings if there is any confrontation. He feels that there is a good place for collaboration but only with like-minded teachers. He is also the math department representative on the school leadership team.
And finally: Principal O’Bryan: “We have some great potential in this department—but we are not using it well.”
Principal O’Bryan, age 45, was most recently the vice principal of a large inner city school. His former principal had a laissez-faire leadership style that left O’Bryan feeling that he had not experienced a mentor relationship. In his own coursework he was drawn to the image of a transformational leader, but he is aware he has the propensity to be autocratic. He sees this new position as an opportunity to develop himself professionally and support the PLC model that he does believe is a key component to success.
The Data
The PLC model relies heavily on student data both as evidence of success and as feedback to guide instruction, so we must logically look at student data when addressing the relative success of the PLC process at Median Middle School. The district participates in the state-mandated annual high stakes test in English and math each spring and consistently performs above the state average passing level.
The English department, which has had more time collaborating and has had more success according to their own views, has shown solid growth. Both seventh- and eighth-grade English/Language Arts (ELA) scores increased by over 6% from 2010 (see Table 1). Teachers routinely use common assessments and share results comfortably and with efficacy; this includes weekly quizzes over vocabulary and grammar, as well as unit tests or projects that are common to all at each grade level.
Overall Performance.
As for math, test scores have only minimally increased. Since the actual adoption of the PLC model in 2011, eighth-grade scores increased by 3% whereas seventh-grade scores rose by 1.5%. One issue here is that although overall scores have increased, disaggregated data actually reveal that scores have actually decreased for Latino, Black, and low socioeconomic status (SES) categories (see Free or Reduced-Price Lunch (FRPL) as a proxy in Table 2) in seventh-grade math. Another is that the same cohort scores are consistently higher in eighth grade. Note that these are proficiency measures, and the school has officially met AYP for the past 3 years. In addition, only two of the five math teams routinely use common assessments. Moreover, the results are only shared between one of these two teams regularly and only as a formality. The results are not used to improve teaching and learning; the purpose of giving common assessments is either not understood or not supported.
Partial Disaggregated Results.
Principal O’Bryan’s Task
Principal O’Bryan knows that the superintendent firmly supports the PLC model as the primary solution to help increase academic achievement for ALL students in the district, including Median. He can clearly see that there have been mixed results with the process to date at Median, from both student data and from early discussions with staff members. He must devise an action plan that not only addresses the issues within and across teams that are causing discord but also considers other steps that the school might want to take to continue the task of ensuring that every student achieves his or her utmost potential.
Teaching Notes
This case was developed for use with future school leaders in an educational setting. There are several topics of discussion that can be developed, including but not limited to policy implementation, the efficacy of PLCs, and improving student learning outcomes.
The setting is a solidly performing middle school in the third year of implementing a new policy of common assessments through a professional learning committee model. Data are presented about the students, the district, and the teachers involved. Students must support the main player in the story: a new principal who is about to begin work with an established math department in the midst of collaborative crisis.
Working with a group, discuss the key concepts that Principal O’Bryan needs to address in his first speech. What steps do you think he should have taken before this meeting? What additional information would he need to help him identify his priorities for the coming year? Are the underperforming and underserved populations the primary concern? Prepare a “speech” to give to your faculty members. Anticipate the questions the faculty might have.
Assume that improving the PLC process is Principal O’Bryan’s top priority. Outline an action plan for Principal O’Bryan’s first year at Median. Is there a role for the leadership team that should be developed? What steps can O’Bryan take to become a transformational leader?
Median is not a “failing” school. What are the major differences that you see considering they are in what some might call a “satisfactory” position based on recent state and federal accountability measures. Does this have any impact on Principal O’Bryan’s priorities? Is it “easier” to bring about reform in a school like Median, or is it harder? Why, and what factors lead to your conclusion? AND—Who defines satisfactory, failing, or successful?
Who is responsible for ensuring that a departmental-level planning team runs smoothly? What steps should be taken at the beginning of a new school year to remind returning faculty and educate new ones on the district and school expectations for the guaranteed PLC planning time? How can O’Bryan help to ensure that the PLC time provides teachers with the professional conversations they need to grow?
Fullan (2007) addresses several factors that can influence implementation; more specifically, he argues that there are four key factors related to the change itself that are integral to its success: need, clarity, complexity, and quality. Which factors are currently contributing to the success of the PLC process? Are any hindering it?
DuFour and Marzano (2011) state that one role of the principal is to train team leaders that will in turn lead the collaborative process in each PLC. How might Principal O’Bryan incorporate this to the benefit of Median? What are some arguments against assigning a team leader to each PLC?
Many researchers emphasize the importance of a coach or facilitator to support PLCs not just at the inception but also as an ongoing resource (Hands, Guzar, & Rodrigue, 2015; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). How might this be implemented in a school like Median? McLaughlin and Talbert also note that school administrators must mediate conflicts to guarantee that teams do not lose momentum. When, and how, should a principal intervene in a conflict that arises within a team or across teams?
Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, and Easton (2010) put forth a framework of essential supports that includes community, institutional, and structural factors and relies on relational trust. McAlister (2013) notes that an authentically engaged community can help shape reform and strengthen schools. Based on this model, what are some steps that Principal O’Bryan might consider to strengthen the overall academic achievement of Median students, beyond the emphasis on a collaborative culture that is the foundation of the PLC model?
Harris (2005, 2015) presents Douglas’s anthropological framework for understanding school culture as a grid. In strong-grid schools, autonomy is low, roles are clearly defined, and power is centralized; in the weak-grid schools, it is the opposite. Where do you think Median falls? What are the strengths and weaknesses of being a strong-grid school or a weak-grid school if the school is embracing the processes of a PLC model? What is the likelihood of teachers being viewed and trusted as professionals in a strong-grid school? A weak-grid school? What conditions must exist for it to be a “just-right” grid school, in which teacher autonomy and professionalism are respected?
New research suggests that there is a place for “principals in professional learning communities” (called PPLCs) that are facilitated by central office administrators to help principals become more effective instructional leaders; an alternative might be a principal study group (Fink & Resnick, 2001; Honig & Rainey, 2014). What would you need from a PPLC convener? Is this role best served by central administration, or in a different way?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.