Our journey into understanding and developing Professional Learning Communities (PLC) in Chino Valley Unified School District first began in 2008. Led through a district initiative, all 35 schools brought their Guiding Coalitions together to learn how collaborative teams could rally around the right work to improve student learning outcomes. With a great prevailing sense of hope and excitement, all teams were committed to the ideal of the vision for learning for all. As quickly as the teams were fired up, the rampant flames quickly fizzled leaving pockets of teams on their own pursuit to figure out how teams could collectively respond and elevate student learning. As a result, in 2017, the teachers’ association made their request to abandon PLC because teachers did not see the value of weekly built-in time for collaboration and preferred to usethe time for individual teachers to determine.  

We knew we were at a breaking point. With the focus on the what and the how of professional learning communities, we failed to build a collective understanding on the why behind this important work. With an urgency to calibrate our understanding of PLC and rejuvenate our fire for what we could do to elevate student achievement, district management with the teacher association leadership attended a PLC summit to build a shared understanding of professional learning communities. At the visit, we agreed that professional learning communities was what we needed if we wanted to recommit to elevating learning outcomes for every student. We agreed that it was our fundamental responsibility to actualize this purpose, and it was within our control to help all students learn at higher levels. We understood the why behind this work.  

The teachers’ association and the district recommitted to the rejuvenation of professional learning communities and agreed that we are the ones who can control what we do for our students. Since our time at the PLC summit, 100% of our teachers have gone through trainings to build their capacity to participate and grow in a professional learning community, every school site has expanded their PLC Guiding Coalition members, and the central office has worked through a top down, bottom-up approach in building our collective capacity and accountability. Through collaboration with our teachers’ association, we have used what we have coined as our “Yellow Sheet” to lay out what we are going to be tight about and loose about in our development with PLCs.  

Since 2017, building capacity has become a thread in our culture. All new teachers participate in an onboarding process to acquaint them through the Chino Valley way which includes the importance of learning in professional learning communities. Throughout the year, new hires participate in professional development to further their skill set on engaging in a PLC at Work model with learning centered around deconstructing essential standards, developing common formative assessments, lesson design that have built in time for re-engagement and extension, and incorporating evidence-based research strategies. Every year with all staff, we recommit and align our understanding of shared expectations with PLC commitments with our school teams in many ways. Five new cohorts of school level PLC Guiding Coalition teams have gone through our PLC Leadership Academy designed in collaboration with Janel Keating, Solution Tree consultant, and district administrators to meet the needs of our schools. There is dedicated time during administrator meetings that allow for further collaboration and review of student learning progress in the context of our “Yellow Sheet.”Our 35 schools have been organized by high school feeder patterns to work together in calibrating and monitoring student achievement and their shared PLC commitments from the “Yellow Sheet.” Outside of administrator meetings, principals monitor their feeder group PLC commitments by monitoring implementation using a common observation tool and through collaborative learning rounds hosted at schools. Importantly, district administrators also attend monthly school site Leadership Meetings made up of grade level and department leaders to monitor and support schools on the implementation of the PLC collaborative actions on the “Yellow Sheet.”  

During the 2018-2019 school year, our district established committees of teachers and instructional coaches to identify district wide essential standards for each grade level or course.  After receiving feedback from teachers at all 35 schools on which standards should be deemed essential, the committees were tasked with “running” each ofthe identified standards through a validation process to evaluate for Relevance, Endurance, Assessment value, and Leverage (REAL).  The standards that met all components of the REAL criteria became our district wide 10-12 essential standards in each grade level/course to establish our guaranteed and viable curriculum.   

Districtwide implementation of essential standards began in the 2019-2020 school year. To monitor student learning around the essential standards, committees also created formative Essential Standards Assessments (ESAs) that are administered district wide three times a year. The ESA data has provided teacher teams direction during the year to inform instruction and keep a focus on essential standards that students have not yet mastered.The District ESA committee alsoreview ESA results to monitordistrict wide progress of the essential standards which informthe level and types of professional development supportfor our schools.  

Our district has multiple layers of monitoring in place to ensure the essential standards are used as the guaranteed and viable curriculum at all school sites.   The Superintendent’s Teaching and Learning Task Force comprised of teachers, school site administrators and district office administrators meet during the year and are responsible for providing district wide areas of emphasis.  The Task Force reviews ESA and Smarter Balanced data as part of their work and has recognized the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum. As a result, essential standards are one of three areas of emphasis that drive district wide professional development for teaching and learning.  Another layer of monitoring occurs by our school site administrators.  We provide training to administrators on what to look for when they visit classrooms to monitor teaching of essential standards through the use of learning targets and success criteria.  School administrators have been trained in a process to determine if the learning targets, success criteria, and student work products align with the rigor called for in essential standards.  Not only are administrators trained on what to look for when visiting classrooms, we have also provided them with learning on how to give explicit feedback to teachers about learning targets, success criteria and/or rigorous student work products. Our district has created essential standards books for administrators to carry as they walk classrooms to be able to implement the training they have received and build their own capacity around the essential standards.  Administrators are also trained to look at team generated common formative assessments (CFAs) to support teachers in ensuring the assessment items are at grade level expectation so there are no surprises when students take a summative assessment. 

A strong emphasis is placed on Tier 1 instruction, which we have termed First Best Instruction (FBI).  FBI incorporates a structured lesson structure and sequence, high levels of student engagement, and constant checking for understanding.  A systematic approach to intervention can only occur when FBI is strong. 

Prior to daily FBI, teams plan instruction before the unit begins through intentional backwards planning. This includes identifying essential standards in the unit, creating learning targets and success criteria for the essential standards, generating common formative assessments (CFAs) for targets that are hard to learn, hard to teach, and worth the intervention, generating end of unit assessments, and determining the amount of days needed to complete the unit.  As part of unit planning, teams alsodetermine when they will administer CFAs and when to respond based off the CFA data.   

A multi-tiered approach is used to re-engage students who need additional time and support and provide extension for students who are ready. In our district, we are “tight” in that we will systematically respond during the school day after a common formative assessment when students do not learn/or learn the essential standards, but “loose” on our methods for response. Tier 2 instruction is tied directly to those learning targets or subsets of the essential standard, and Tier 3 instruction are individualized skill(s) that are foundational to the essential standard and were not met with Tier 2 supports.  

Early intervention is a priority at the elementary school level. As a result, all students take a universal screener to determine which students would benefit from intensive support every year. To meet this end, schools are staffed with up to two intervention teachers who assist in providing intensive Tier 3 support. When Tier 3 support is not needed, intervention teachers serve along with the classroom teacher to provide additional targeted Tier 2 small group instruction. Schedules at elementary schools ensure students receiving intensive support are not pulled out of class during Tier 1 instruction on the essentials.  

At the secondary level, Tier 2 and 3 instruction is embedded during the class period to address specific learning targets (Tier 2) and skills thatare foundational to the essential standard (Tier 3) with/without the assistance of a collaborative teacher. The number of days for intervention will vary based on the additional amount of time/support needed for learning. Tiers 2 or 3 cannot occur during Tier 1 instruction around the essential standards. Students who are significantly below grade level are also enrolled in additional Tier3 support classes in Math and/or English. Master schedules have been created, as feasible, to place the same content areas during the same period. This allows teachers to rotate students among teachers to provide intervention on the essential standards and incorporate extension activities with the nice to know standards. Singleton classes use a rotation system within the classroom to provide intervention and extension during unit check points.   

Students who have demonstrated proficiency on the essential standards are provided extension that allows interaction with the “nice to know” standards and extend their learning beyond the guaranteed and viable curriculum. Enrichment is also provided in our district. Different from extension, enrichment opportunities are provided to all students to enhance their learning experience. 

Reflection and continuous improvement are built into the culture of Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD). As an indicator of our commitment to student learning, our teacher teams worked hard during the COVID-19 Pandemic to minimize the learning loss that was evident in most schools across the nation. Upon returning to in-person learning after COVID-19, we were the only school district in the county and the only district comparable in size of benchmarked districts with increases on state assessment scores in English-language arts and a minimal decrease in Mathematics during that unprecedented time. We attribute this to the value we have placed with professional learning communities.  

In our cycle of improvement, while our students have demonstrated high levels of learning on state assessments that are significantly above the county and state averages, we recognize that there is still much to do to fulfill our promise of high levels of learning around our essential standards for every student.  

For our students with disabilities, state assessment scores show decreases at certain grade levels or stagnant growth. To ensure our promise to our students, we have increased focus on district-wide essential standards by incorporating, when appropriate, these needs on students’individualized educational plans (IEPs). Additionally, more students with IEPs in junior high and high school participate in rigorous co-taught classrooms where they benefit from two educators. This is also evident with the steady increase of collaborative classrooms in our schools over the last three years. Special Education teachers are an integral part of school site PLC Guiding Coalitions who receive additional training that better equip our teams to take collective responsibility in maximizing learning for all students.  

Long range academic indicators for students with an IEP such as graduation rates (CVUSD: 85.4% in 2023/State: 75.2% in 2023), the percentage of students earning the Golden State Seal Merit Diploma requiring a high school diploma and mastery in at least six subject areas (CVUSD: 11.6% in 2023/State: 11.2% in 2023), and meeting eligibility for California State University and the University of California (CVUSD: 29.2% in 2023/State: 21.1% in 2023) reflect we are making progress.  

Our economically disadvantaged student group outpaces the state average on state assessments and continue to rise in meeting rigorous requirements for California State University and the University of California (CVUSD: 47.1% in 2023/State: 42.9% in 2023), Golden State Seal Merit Diploma (CVUSD 30% in 2023/State: 23.5% in 2023), and graduating with demonstrating fluency inspeaking, reading, and writing one or more languages in addition to English(CVUSD: 19.5% in 2023/State: 11.4% in 2023). However, an opportunity gap exists when compared to all students. To ensure we are fulfilling our promise of a guaranteed and viable curriculum, we continue to focus on every student with a stronger implementation of Tier I practices coupled with a systematic response to instruction through timely interventions. Because we know that early intervention proves to be the most effective for bridging gaps, if students are not making sufficient progress,through the Student Team Excellence Plan (STEP) process, educators, families, and students collaborate to design a holistic plan to support student learning. This process utilizes a team approach to better understand the students’ academic/behavioral learning needs and a developmentof an action plan with interventions with indicators of success to discern if the outlined interventions are resulting in improved learning. Several team collaboration meetings are held thereafter to continue to monitor progress.  

Essential Standards Assessments (ESA) are locally developed formative assessments that provide schools and the district with the progress of our promise to our students in learning the essential standards at high levels. ESAs were developed by committees of teachers during the 2018-2019 school year, and students took the exams for the first time in 2019-2020. In spring 2020, students took the final ESA at home and continued to do so through most of the 2020-2021 school year due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Because these assessments may not have been administered and proctored under the same conditions, we recognize that the results yield limited validity. Additionally, we have made adjustments to the test every year since 2020 to strengthen the validity and reliability of the assessments. As such, while we have found correlations of student performance on the ESA to the state assessments in English-language arts and Mathematics, we know the annual changes to the ESA will affect our ability to make accurate conclusions of progress for comparative purposes each year. To monitor student progress and learning, we have also examined multiple indicators including student’s cohort progress on the ESA, state assessment results year to year and cohort data, district survey results, and school level SMART goal progress which in combination reflect that continued work in strengthening professional learning communities is key in getting more students to learn at higher levels.  

We are committed to improving learning and embrace professional learning communities as the vehicle for ensuring higher levels of learning for all students at every school in our district.  

Featured in Cotttingham, B., Hough, H., & Myung, J. (2023).  What Does it Take to Accelerate the Learning of Every Child? Early Insights from a CCEE School Improvement Pilot. Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)., for improving teaching and learning at a District Scale through a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work model 

Featured in Eaker, R., Hagadone, M., Keating, J., & Rhoades, M. (2021). Leading PLCs at Work Districtwide from Boardroom to Classroom. Solution Tree Press., for the successful district wide implementation of Professional Learning Communities which improved student achievement on local and state standardized assessments  

Featured in Podolsky A., Darling-Hammond, L. Doss, C., & Reardon, S.  (2019). California Positive Outliers-Districts Beating the Odds. Learning Policy Institute., for students of color demonstrating extraordinary levels of academic achievement for and performing better than students of similar racial/ethnic backgrounds from families of similar income and education levels, measured by the California’s Smarter Balanced Assessment in English language arts and mathematics  

AP School Honor Roll  

PBIS State Recognized Schools for Platinum, Gold, or Bronze Status 

California State Gold Ribbon/Distinguished Schools 

California Business for Education Excellence