PLC Rubric and Reflections

In a teaching partner meeting just before the holiday break, we were asked to look through the APS PLC Rubric to describe the work of teachers we were observing in PLCs. Since the school I work for is still one that lacks teachers and student work, I chose the rubric indicators that struck me as the most important for effective PLCs. Here they are, cut free from their boxes in the rubric, with key phrases bolded. 

Dillon/Highlands Copy of APS PLC Rubric

I expect some of our teachers next year will be familiar with this rubric because they’ve used it in a professional development setting. Others might be seeing it for the first time. Whatever the case, the document will probably help anchor our initial work in PLCs because it provides some vocabulary, and critical criteria for us to consider. 

Here are the four boxes I chose, with some key phrases highlighted:

• Priority standards, assessments, and instruction are all aligned to focus teaching and learning. Priority standards used to communicate and report learning. Team is very clear and tight on the alignment of priority standards, instruction and assessment. Priority standards used as a reference point to generate professional inquiry and instructional improvement.

• Teachers function as a team. They work collaboratively to identify collective learning goals, develop strategies to achieve those goals, gather relevant data, and learn from one another. Unlike a work group, they are characterized by common goals, joint problem-solving and interdependent efforts to achieve those goals. A desire to do the best for ALL students pervades the school.

• A range of evidence is used in a process of collaborative inquiry. Both qualitative and quantitative data is used. The data is disaggregated, and triangulated. Visual representation is used to support data analysis. Student learner needs are identified and instructional interventions are drawn from the evidence and supported by research.

• Interventions are planned and regular follow up timely assessment of the intervention throughout the year through tiered intervention. Extensions provided for students who “already know it.”

• Everyone in the school participates in an ongoing cycle of systematic gathering and analysis of data to identify discrepancies between actual and desired results, goal setting to reduce the discrepancies, developing strategies to achieve the goals, and tracking improvement indicators. Resources are targeted strategically and deployed to support PLCs.

As useful as the activity of studying the district rubric is, it is a pretty dry tool. It is not nearly as interesting as hearing practicing teachers talk about the work of their PLCs and discuss how PLCs help their teaching. 

Teacher reflections about PLCs are really supportive because teachers who have worked collaboratively in ways that help their teaching, and support professional learning, will name the things they have experienced and want to replicate. The things they name likely won’t appear on the rubric but probably should be the building blocks for our processes in the coming year. 

I wonder, how do teachers’ evaluations of PLCs differ from the ways the rubric suggests we evaluate them? How could those teacher perspectives shape a rubric of our own design? 

What are your thoughts? 

What kinds of routines do your PLCs use that you find really helpful? 

If you could change one thing about how your PLCs work, what would you change?