Question

describe one advantage and one disadvantage of having PLCs. Would you want to be on a school site that uses PLCs to analyze student data? Explain.

Answer 1

Advantage of of having PLCs:

Improved Teacher Performance: PLCs revolve around collaboration. This collaboration encourages teachers to work together to solve problems and try new things. Through PLCs, teachers learn more about their profession through discussion, trial and error, and data. This allows teachers to make changes to their current practices. The result is an improvement in teacher performance.

Improved Student Achievement:

PLCs use data to improve student learning. Teachers are encouraged to gather assessment data and create goals based on that data. Teachers work together to analyze students' strengths and weaknesses in order to improve student achievement.

Disadvantage of having PLCs:

Improper Implementation: The most common drawbacks of PLCs come from incorrect implementation. This could be on the part of the teachers or the administrators. For example, if the administrators dominate PLC time and do not share leadership roles, this results in an ineffective PLC. Similarly, if teachers do not embrace the collaborative aspect of a PLC, they will not reap the benefits.

Yes, I would want to be on a school site that uses PLCs to analyze student data.

As we work as a PLC, we go from being teachers who look at data as something we receive to teachers who use data as a tool to improve learning. Functioning as a professional learning community means we don't take for granted that students may have learned what a teacher presented. Rather, we learn to look at the data from common assessments as a guide for what each student needs to learn in order to master the essential outcomes.

We have been trained to teach, test, and continue on with the next unit, with the focus on TEACHING. Now we teach, assess, review the data, change our instruction to meet the needs of the student, assess again. This shifts the focus to LEARNING.

By looking at the data we realize, that some of us are better at some things and some of us are better at others! Here we leave our egos at the door and honest conversation start to happen and learning will be a paramount.