Collaborative teaching culture urged

5/3/05 -- School boards ought to require teachers to work together in collaborative teams in order to improve schools, says Rick DuFour, the former superintendent of the much-honored Adlai Stevenson High School District 125 in Lincolnshire, Ill.

DuFour, co-author of several how-to books on education leadership, including Whatever It Takes: How Professional Learning Communities Respond When Kids Don’t Learnô told the audience at a Focus on Education Lecture that there is widespread agreement in academic and association circles that establishing a team teaching culture is the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement.

Combined with a thirst for data and a commitment to take prompt action based on data, the goal of having every student learn is achievable, he says.

Schools and school boards have focused too much on educational inputs (curricular guides, schedules, time on task, and the like) instead of outcomes -- measurable forms of student achievement, DuFour says. Also, they have erred by allowing individual teachers to decide how to respond when students don’t learn.

Instead, he says, school boards ought to create mandatory systems that instill a collaborative culture in student learning in which teachers:

• meet regularly in teams organized by grade level, subject matter, or some other criterion that makes sense;

• compare their teaching practices to the best methods available;

• develop common tests, so they can identify patterns early and have data that can be compared;

• regularly analyze results, such as every three weeks; and

• develop a series of increasingly drastic interventions to take place if a student has failed to meet standards.

Too many teachers wash their hands of underachievers, DuFour says. These teachers will explain a student’s failure by saying they did their job by presenting the information in engaging lessons, and that students failed because they failed to apply themselves or take advantage of extra help.