The Study

Torres, K., Rooney, K., Holmgren, M., Young, S. Y., Taylor, S., & Hanson, H. (2020). PLC at Work in Arkansas: Driving achievement results through school transformation and innovation. Portland, OR: Education Northwest.

In March 2017, the 91st General Assembly of the State of Arkansas passed a bill to provide both funding and training for the implementation of professional learning communities at all levels of preK–12 schools and teacher preparation programs throughout the state. Arkansas’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education partnered with Solution Tree to begin the incremental process of systematically training cohorts of schools and districts in the 2017–18 academic year. To date, there have been a total of 6 cohorts composed of 66 schools and 11 districts selected for training and implementation. is article provides details generated by a third-party research rm hired to conduct an external evaluation of Arkansas’s PLC at Work model.

Education Northwest worked with Solution Tree to design a logic model to show how schools making progress on the PLC at Work process will increase interest in and capacity to do the work. Improved instructional practice occurs, causing an increase in student engagement, which helps drive continuous stu- dent achievement. With this logic model in mind, evaluation methods were developed to test the 10 schools and 1 district in Arkansas’s rst PLC cohort group. ese schools were studied in the rst three years of implementation, from 2017 to 2020. Data sources included multiple surveys, 22 interviews, 20 focus groups, training documents, school documents, and school and student data.

The Findings

Four key ndings from this longitudinal study were discussed in this article.

1. “Students in PLC at Work Cohort 1 schools showed improved academic achievement and higher levels of engagement” (p. 2).

Due to inconsistencies with state testing during COVID-19, the 2019–20 school year provided no data for this study. Regardless, schools in the PLC cohort saw a positive impact in student achievement during their second year of implementation. Measured growth was indicated on the ACT Aspire math and English language arts test. is included positive