The start of a new school year brings renewed interest in how schools "do" teaching and learning. Over the past few weeks my Google alerts have produced countless articles on schools that are "betting" on professional learning communities to close the achievement gap. I'll take that bet, but only if these schools are paying attention to those elements of PLCs that are critical to getting results for educators and students.
Our definition of effective professional learning captures the foundation of the PLC strategy. I have converted the key components of the definition into questions that I invite you to take to your school leadership team, or to your grade or subject-level learning team, to make sure you have everything in place to get you the best results for this new school year.
