For several years in the Estacada School District, we had practiced “PLC Super Lite.” At best, we had one or two collaborative teams district-wide trying to practice the DuFour Model of PLCs while the rest of the district spent many hours meeting, talking about students, planning instruction, discussing field trips, brainstorming fundraisers, etc. Clearly, as a system, we failed to focus on the four key questions of a professional learning community and the three big ideas that drive PLC work during our designated time.  

However, in 2016-2017, we began to go “all in” as a district to institute the DuFour Model PLC systematically and made the following key changes:

• We invested heavily in PLC staff development by sending 10-15 staff a year to a national PLC conference and hired Tim Brown to lead an on-site, full day of professional development for our entire district last year, and continuing to send staff each year to Solution Tree PLC conferences using Grant funded professional development. 

• We have dedicated at least two full days a year to refine, revisit, adapt, and further develop our collaborative teams in the PLC process and do the work that needs to be revisited annually.

• We created a two-hour PLC time every Friday with a four-day school week, with a two-hour student intervention and enrichment time on Friday as well to support our PLC work. 

• We combined our two K-5 schools to increase collaboration for PLC meetings. This allowed us to have 5-6 teachers per team instead of 2-3 professionals per team. 

• Created a shared Google folder for all teams to share their team documents and district templates

• Collaboratively created templates for the following:

  • Backward Unit Planning

  • Essential Learning Standards

  • Scope and Sequence for courses or subjects

  • Data analysis forms for common formative assessments

  • Team meeting notes 

  • Team Norms

• We increased the time for professional development and placed the PLC process as the recipient of the majority of our professional development.

• Established a weekly administrative team meeting to reflect, plan, and measure the effectiveness of our PLCs.

Through carefully selecting leaders and teachers and applying a PLC lens throughout the hiring process, we have added a strong cadre of collaborative, risk-taking, results-oriented staff that have assisted our teams in moving forward in our PLC journey. PLCs are not what we do for two hours on a Friday afternoon but how we think and approach student learning every day. Our collaborative teams use the framework and structure daily in their work. 

We spend our in-service week of the 2023-24 school year together with Prek-12, going back to the basics of the PLC process, having the collaborative teams identify where they need improvement and support in the process, and having them create a team goal around that improvement. We have time for a renewed alignment to our PLC work as a district K-12. 

 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Creating and implementing a guaranteed and viable curriculum is an ongoing process reviewed and refined each year as our Collaborative teams better understand our students’ strengths and weaknesses. In addition, we continue to refine the needed rigor to attain proficiency and purposefully reflect on our prior years of experience. Beginning in August our collaborative teams evaluate the national, state, and professional standards for their grade levels and content areas, our previously identified essential learning standards, student results from the previous year on the State Assessment, and all local common formative assessments. 

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

Along with daily formative assessments in the classroom and the use of our collaborative teams' common formative assessments, our teachers utilize data in our data analysis process to timely identify students in need of interventions and/or enrichment. Once a student is identified we have set up a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) specific to each building. Regardless of building, our students are provided the needed support, standard by standard and student by student, within the regular school day in our work to ensure that “all” students learn at high levels.  

Three of our schools have sent a team of teachers to an RTI at Work conference, and they have all newly designed their systems to be put in place next year.  Our older system placed the responsibility of providing assistance to our Tier 3 students on specialists only. In addition, very little of our Tier 2 students' needs were being met. Therefore, each school has established a new process where teachers and collaborative teams provide Tier 1 & 2 supplemental support for students in identified target areas of the essential learning standards. In addition, each building has a school-wide team that plans and executes a program to address students in Tiers 1, 2, and 3 during a structured time within the school day to all students in need, regardless of special program participation. These school-wide teams ensure that all students are learning and provide everything from behavioral, attendance, and motivational support to intensive remedial support designed to ensure that “all” means “all.” In 2022-2023, we moved to a four-day school week, utilizing the 5th day of the week to bring in students specifically for interventions and enrichment based on the PLC data. 

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

In the 2014-2015 school year,, our district created our first district strategic plan in over a decade. This plan was inclusive of all aspects of our district and included a strong emphasis on the development of Professional Learning Communities. For the first time, our district and community placed a high priority on high-functioning professional learning communities district-wide. As a result, in the 2015-2016 school year, we began looking at the hard reality of our student learning data, prioritizing the DuFour model of PLCs, training new and more experienced staff in PLCs, and focussing on results. More importantly, however, we made the DuFour model of PLCs a district initiative and no longer allowed schools and collaborative teams to opt in or out of this initiative.

During the summer of 2017, we had a new superintendent join us and, in his own words, shared that, “The Estacada School District was ALL IN with the Dufour model of PLCs.” As a result, we have invested heavily in the training of our teachers and administrators in PLCs while limiting other initiatives to maintain this focus. We brought our two K-5 schools together to work collaboratively in teams of 5-6 professionals, and we provided two hours a week on Fridays to do the DuFour model work. 

This work has been guided by “Learning By Doing,” and we have collaboratively created important Google Doc templates to assist us in doing the work, sharing the work, and evaluating our strengths and weaknesses together. Every newly hired teacher is provided a copy of “Learning By Doing” as part of their onboarding. Our four district priorities under the student success pillar of our strategic plan are PLCs, Standards Based Learning and Reporting, Improvement Science, and Inclusive Practices, the major areas we develop in a four-day onboarding event for all new staff. We also have periodic meetings with teachers soliciting feedback on how to improve the PLC process and conduct surveys of staff and parents soliciting feedback on how to improve what we do. Our leadership team, including our instructional coach, completed a Fishbone and Driver Diagram in order to identify how we can strengthen our PLC effectiveness. This work guided us in our “all in” efforts and allowed us to respond quicker to teacher and team needs. 

Before last school year, “PLCs” meant two hours a week to most staff members. Today, I am proud to say that “PLCs” is an attitude and belief that is present in the Estacada School District at least 8:00-4:00 five days a week.

Achievement Data Files

• district-eoe-data-estacada.pdf

Additional Achievement Data

While we have seen a dip in our State testing scores since the pandemic and recognize that we have a big gap to fill, our collaborative teams have identified the gap using the data, identified the problem using that data, and have made adjustments to address the gap while keeping the rigor high. State scores are not where we want them to be, but we have a solid plan to get back on track and recognize that they are one data point that does not tell the whole story. Our internal systems have a better pulse on where our students are because of our PLC process. 

We have created a strong data system that looks weekly at our Essential Learning Standard data provided from the PLC's common formative and summative assessment. We pull the data into a dashboard that is updated weekly with attendance data, missing assignments, and proficiency in Essential Learning Standards. This dashboard is looked at weekly by admin, instructional coaches, and teachers. We pull the data K-12 at the end of each year to see where we are at for the year. We have seen great growth over the last four years, even through the pandemic. Our RTI, tiered approach in our PLC work has greatly impacted getting students to proficiency. Below is the percentage of students marked proficient in their Essential Learning standards K-12 at the end of the year. 

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Files

• 1819-detailsheet-135-2.pdf
• 1819-detailsheet-132-3.pdf
• 1819-detailsheet-131-3.pdf
• estacada-school-district-allthingsplc-application-1.pdf
• _assessment-data-analysis-form-1.pdf
• 1819-detailsheet-134-2.pdf