Professional Learning Communities at Work® and High Reliability SchoolsTM: Cultures of Continuous Learning (Ensure a viable and guaranteed curriculum) (Leading Edge)

by Robert E. Eaker, Robert J. Marzano, Mario Acosta

Dramatically improve schooling by harnessing the collective power of the High Reliability SchoolsTM (HRS) model and the PLC at Work® process. Featuring some of America's best educators, this anthology includes information, insights, and practical suggestions for both PLCs and HRS. The overarching purpose is to demonstrate how these two approaches, taken together, complement each other and support educators in their efforts to create a culture of continuous improvement. Use this resource to ensure a guaranteed and viable

256 pages, Hardcover

Published February 21, 2020

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is dense. There is plenty of information to help schools navigate their journey to becoming a high reliability school by using professional learning communities, but there is a lot of reading here, and chapters/topics are written by different authors so the voice changes and that may bother some readers. Despite the multiple authors, each chapter follows a similar format, and this helps the book to be cohesive.

I like all of the topics and believe they are all important to creating successful schools - culture, effective teaching, a guaranteed and viable curriculum, PLCs, competency-based education, and leadership. I also like that the book is divide into three parts: the 5 levels of PLC/HRS, PLC/HRS and School Leadership, and PLC/HRS and District Leadership. Depending on where a school is on its journey, the focus could be on one part for quite some time before moving to the next part.

I think reading this book from cover to cover as I did isn't necessarily the way to do this. Although everything goes together, I think it would be better to read one chapter (or one part), reflect, discuss with others, seek further resources as needed, and analyze your school in relation to what you learned in order to determine what you want to/should do to improve your school/student learning. Then repeat this process for each chapter. I also think this is a book that begs not to be read in isolation; even just reading and discussing it chapter by chapter would deepen the experience.

I like that each chapter includes the author bio, charts, graphs, stats, and a similar format to the other chapters. This is a blueprint to follow to create and sustain high quality PLCs which have the biggest impact on student learning, and I truly appreciate that. I also like that the chapters are set up in a "do this first and then that" format. We cannot talk about effective teaching strategies, power standards, and a guaranteed and viable curriculum until we create a safe, supportive, and collaborative culture. The chapters on leadership will help to ensure all of this happens.

[Jordan Yates · Rating 3 out of 5]

a compilation of articles which continually cite each other