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Professional Learning Communities are an important means toward the goal of improving schools so that students can learn at high levels. Professional Learning Communities, when well-implemented, have a laser-focus on learning, work collaboratively, and hold themselves accountable for results. In this article, the central concept of "implementation fidelity" is studied due to its undoubted importance. Furthermore, a survey method is suggested for assessing implementation. This method assessed the three key components of a true PLC: (a) Learning as our fundamental purpose, (b) Collaborative culture, and (c) Results orientation. Implications for practice are discussed, including the impact of the implementation fidelity check on student results.
There are countless school districts implementing Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) across the country. However, as with any educational reform strategy ever applied, there is a tendency to lose the true meaning of (a) what it is, (b) how to implement it, and (c) what kind of results are being achieved. The first challenge is to clearly define the core elements that are essential to the PLC process. A second problem of practice is determining if those elements have been truly implemented because we know that valuable concepts can be poorly implemented. The third and final problem of practice is about the results-orientation of the PLC process and how it demands analysis of whether or not the implementation of the educational reform strategy is actually making a positive impact on student learning.
This article will address those challenges and will draw some implications from our experience in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The intent of this article is to inform the practice of school districts around the nation interested in deepening their PLC implementation as a mean for positively impacting student learning. We believe that PLCs can be a vehicle for closing the gap between a school's overall organizational strategy and the individual students needing personalized support and interventions. We hope to inform school and district leaders in their challenge of managing change for the benefit of student learning, as regularly measured and monitored with local formative and benchmark common assessments, as well as annually measured with the statewide assessment system. We also anticipate that this article will inform leaders striving to overcome the common pitfalls in the implementation process in an accountability-driven...