Parkway Agreements and Actions: Professional Learning Communities The Parkway Agreements encompass all schools, the early childhood center and Multiple School Professional Learning Communities (general and special educators). We, as educators employed by the Parkway School District who are committed to ensuring the time allocated for PLCs is utilized to achieve the mission of achievement for all, are agreeing to commit to the following:

Agreements All collaborative teams will be mutually accountable and responsible for…

1. Using the five critical questions of collaborative teams to ensure the work is student centered.  What do we want our students to understand?  How will we know if they understand?  How will we respond when students do not understand?  How will we respond when a student already understands it?  What are best practices to ensure student understanding? 2. Designing SMART goals to target area(s) of student need.

3. Using common formative and common summative assessments, interpreting the results, and responding appropriately.

The Agreements in Action The Agreements in Action are a list of what MAY be seen at a CLT meeting demonstrating the agreements in action. A team would not be engaged in all of these at one time BUT they should be engaged in some of these all of the time.  Every member is engaged (the team members are present, actively participate and do not work on individual side work)  Team members address each other in a professional manner.  Team members are prepared for the meeting.  Team members share data and best practices, changing practice as appropriate.  Team members demonstrate collective responsibility for ALL students including planning and implementing interventions for all students (not just the student’s in their class).  Team members support the group’s decisions.  Team members are working toward a common goal.  The team utilizes protocols to promote the team’s effectiveness.  The team participates in learning for themselves to assist them in being more effective (e.g. research strategies for formative assessment, use them and determine effectiveness)  The team engages in discussions that are curriculum and evidence based.  The team utilizes the Parkway curriculum to determine the focus of learning for the students.  The team creates, implements and analyzes formative and summative assessments (variety of types including rubrics) based on the identified high leverage goals from Stage 1.  The team discusses how to assist students who don’t get it and how to challenge kids who do get it prior to giving an assessment (pro-active) and after giving an assessment.  The team creates structures to assist students who do not understand.  The team reflects on student data to determine if a team member’s strategy for teaching is more effective.  The team understands that if a large group of students are not successful the practice used to teach the students may need to be changed.  The team engages in action research to determine the best practice for initial instruction.      

The team utilizes their SMART goal to drive their discussion. The team reviews the SMART goal at the beginning of each meeting. The team discusses current progress toward achievement of the SMART goal. The SMART goal is on the agenda. The team creates a student-centered SMART goal and has action steps to achieve the goal. The team creates a high-leverage SMART goal that will impact student achievement.

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The team creates, develops or revises an assessment (formative or summative). The team creates, develops or revises a rubric or scoring guide. The team utilizes pre-assessment data to plan for instruction. The team participates in common scoring. The team discusses the results of a common assessment. The team uses the results of the assessment to determine differentiation, intervention and/or change in teaching practice. The team discusses the results of a formative assessment to guide future instruction Assessment results are charted and displayed – visible to all to monitor student growth.

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4. Being data-driven to continuously monitor and respond to student needs.

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The team is analyzing student data and making decisions for groups of students or individual students based on the results. The team is changing instructional practice based on student results. The team is collecting and storing data (data wall, PARS, SMART Notebook, Google Drive, etc.) The team is utilizing PARS or IC to inform their decision making for individual students.

5. Providing evidence of the work in progress and results achieved.

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Agenda and minutes are shared as appropriate. Increase in student achievement on team, district and/or state assessments. Teacher tools are created and published for the use by the team. Common formative and/or summative assessments are created and shared including rubrics. Reflection sheets submitted to the principal (required at some schools)

The Parkway Agreements and the Agreements in Action were created and approved by the elected representative serving on the Professional Learning Action Team. Note: Additional agreements may be added at the school/MSPLC level.