Table 2.3: Percentage of Students Meeting the NECAP Reading Standard
Source: © 2016 by Bill Olsen. Used with permission.
In 2015, Rutland High moved from lagging behind the state average in reading, writing, mathematics, and science to matching or—more often—exceeding the state average with consistency, even as the state average had increased in all but one area. While the gaps between Rutland High’s students and the state’s students have narrowed since 2013, Rutland High’s overall trajectory continues to go in an upward direction for all students, especially the economically disadvantaged—a group that continues to increase in size each year.
These two brief case studies—(1) Hawk Elementary, from a large urban district of approximately 25,000 students at the time, and (2) Rutland High, from a small rural district of approximately 2,200 students at that time—offer student achievement gain stories, and they are only a sampling of the repeated success stories educators can find in the literature and on websites like AllThingsPLC (www.allthingsplc.info). It makes sense that when educators work together to solve a complex problem, such as addressing gaps in student achievement, amazing things can happen. Learners win when teachers collaborate on their behalf.
A Win for Teachers
Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker (2008) believe that the practice of using common assessments is critical in the work of PLCs. In fact, it is the engine that drives success. They highlight how the practice ultimately impacts student achievement but also offers teachers and their teams additional advantages; it increases their efficiency, promotes equity, improves monitoring, informs and refines teacher practice, and develops teacher capacity (DuFour et al., 2008). Collaborative common assessment helps teachers work smarter, not harder. The early stages of any new process can feel laborious and time consuming, but as with any process that becomes a standard operating procedure, time and experience can increase a team’s level of comfort, knowledge, and skills in a manner that increases efficiency and effectiveness.
Undoubtedly, teachers make a difference. “Educational researchers have proposed that teachers themselves are one of the most important determinants of their teaching practices and students’ achievement” (Guo, Connor, Yang, Roehrig, & Morrison, 2012, p. 4). But schools face the challenge of finding ways they can develop all teachers’ abilities to have the same powerful and positive impact on student learning. Through the collaborative common assessment process, teachers work smarter, highlight and share early successes and performance satisfaction, and develop a collective strength in navigating challenging situations. One of the greatest benefits, then, of the collaborative common assessment process is seemingly intangible and long term: it increases collective teacher efficacy.
When teachers have efficacy, belief in one’s ability to reach desired outcomes, it has a tremendous impact on student learning. In fact, as Anita Woolfolk points out in a 2004 interview:
Teachers who set high goals, who persist, who try another strategy when one approach is found wanting—in other words, teachers who have a high sense of efficacy and act on it—are more likely to have students who learn. (as cited in Shaughnessy, 2004, pp. 156–157)
In her research on teacher efficacy, Nancy Protheroe (2008) notes that:
Teachers with a stronger sense of efficacy—
• Tend to exhibit greater levels of planning and organization;
• Are more open to new ideas and more willing to experiment with new methods …;
• Are more persistent and resilient when things do not go smoothly;
• Are less critical of students when they make [mistakes]; and
• Are less inclined to refer a [challenging] student for special education. (p. 43)
Imagine, then, the power of a team of teachers exhibiting collective efficacy. Researchers who have studied the phenomenon note that some schools demonstrate a collective sense of efficacy (Goddard & Skrla, 2006; Hoy, Sweetland, & Smith, 2002; Ross & Gray, 2006; Supovitz & Christman, 2003). In such schools, teachers are less likely to shift blame for poor student performance to the students themselves or outside contributing factors (such as economic limitations, limited English proficiency, and lack of parent involvement) and are more likely to instead take responsibility with a positive attitude, willingly accept challenging student achievement goals, and persist in accomplishing those goals (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000). Collaborative common assessments create the constructs that support the development of collective efficacy. Dana Brinson and Lucy Steiner (2007) indicate that although the research is in its early stages, the following constructs for leadership and teacher teams improve collective efficacy:
• Build instructional knowledge and skills [such as plan the common formative and summative assessments needed to guide instruction].
• Create opportunities for teachers to collaboratively share skills and experience [for example, map and execute instruction, intervention, and enrichment strategies to monitor and address results].
• Interpret results and provide actionable feedback on teachers’ performance [such as review data and student evidence to find opportunities for continued learning and action steps for closing achievement gaps].
• Involve teachers in school decision making [for example, use results to design, modify, and improve response to intervention strategies for behavioral and academic needs]. (p. 3)
Teaching is challenging work, and when teachers operate in collaborative teams, individual teachers can move away from confronting seemingly insurmountable challenges with individual learners and instead collaboratively monitor student needs, strategize, and ultimately problem solve and find solutions.
Albert Bandura (1977), an early theorist and researcher of teacher efficacy, defines efficacy as “the conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcome” (p. 193). He also identifies beliefs that efficacious teachers hold regarding their impact on student learning (Bandura, 1997), the following four of which can be directly linked to and impacted by collaborative common assessment. Efficacious teachers believe they can:
1. Influence decisions made in school
2. Overcome the influence of adverse community conditions on student learning
3. Create pathways that make students enjoy coming to school
4. Help students believe they can do well on schoolwork
Through the collaborative common assessment process, teachers influence decisions made in school. They gather data to answer complex questions such as the following.
• “What SMART goals will we write to address our areas for growth?”
• “What priority standards will we need to have in order to address our areas of concern?”
• “How will we need to modify the curriculum so it better aligns with our standards?”
• “What assessments must we modify or create to track progress toward our SMART goals?”
At the very core of their work, collaborative teams must make critical decisions with students in order to guarantee learning, and they anchor those decisions in data they gather from common assessment processes. Moreover, such decisions at the classroom and grade or department levels have a schoolwide impact.
Efficacious teachers understand that their task to help all learners succeed in their school requires them to think outside the box so they can work around hurdles over which they have no control. In their collaborative efforts as a team, and often as an entire