Urban Education and Professional Learning Communities

Leaders of an urban school district organized more than 200 schools into smaller professional learning communities (PLCs) so that teams of reading teachers could collaborate for the purposes of learning, joint lesson planning, and problem-solving. The purpose of the study was to determine if urban students' reading achievement increased as a result of weekly collaboration among teachers in a large, urban school district in Texas. Repeated measures ANOVA results and pair-wise comparisons from quantitative findings revealed that statistically significant growth rates (pBackgroundFrom the inception of Why Johnny Can't Read (Flesch, 1955) to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, leaders at the state and national levels have given great attention to the most effective ways to develop quality educators. This national attention on teacher training, curriculum, and instruction is outlined in detail with each revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESE A). An urban school district in Texas borrowed the notion of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) from the business sector and facilitated this professional development strategy with more than 200 schools.In Texas and across the nation, significant achievement gaps continued to exist between different student groups. Illustrations of such variations between subgroups were evident in the spring 2010 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading data. Students who met standard included 81.2% of African Americans; 84.8% of Hispanics; 93.6% of Whites; 83.1% of Economically Disadvantaged students; 49.9% of Special Education Students; 68.5% of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students; and 74.9% of At- Risk students. As a result of consistent collaboration among teachers, students' reading achievement increased across the district.Literature ReviewThis review encompasses research studies and literature that reported increases in organizational change or student achievement data after consistent facilitation of PLCs. Consideration of professional collaboration began with Follett (1924), whose interest in the human-relations movement in business led to self-governing ways of relating in the workplace. Since Follett's time, the ideas of relating and professional collaboration in the workplace have burgeoned into the development of PLCs in school districts as an alternative to the one-shot staff development approach. This augmentation was largely due to growing evidence that when teachers consistently collaborate and problem-solve, student achievement is enhanced (NSDC, 2001). In 1969, Chin and Benne investigated different strategies to impact teacher change and concluded that the normative-reeducative model was most effective with influencing change in teachers' classroom practices. With the normative-reeducative model, teachers viewed change as a natural process because they were directly involved in decision-making. Chin and Benne reported that, through collaboration over a period of time, teachers were empowered with problem-solving techniques.In the 1970s and 1980s, attention to collaboration continued to flourish in organizations. Burns' (1978) idea of transformational leadership supported Follett's (1924) work on relating in the workplace to further develop the notion of PLCs. PLCs were undergirded by a human and participatory philosophy that manifested through collaboration in the workplace regarding organizational improvement. …