Five Keys to Effective Teacher Learning Teams

By Ronald Gallimore & Bradley A. Ermeling

The Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative is focusing more attention than ever before on teaching effectiveness, with federal funds tied to strategies that improve student performance. For school administrators, these additional requirements mean unprecedented responsibility for ensuring that teachers provide high-quality instruction that promotes the success of all their students.

One popular response calls for on-the-job learning opportunities known as professional learning communities—sometimes called learning teams—in which teachers collaborate to improve instruction. But there has been limited evidence to show that these initiatives actually work, or how to do them well.

In a five-year study of Title I schools, serving more than 14,000 students in all, our team documented the significant contribution of teacher learning teams that were part of a school improvement model we evaluated. Using a rigorous research design, we found that achievement rose by 41 percent overall, and by 54 percent for Hispanic students, after schools converted routine meetings into teacher learning teams focused on what students were struggling to learn. Demographically similar schools selected at the beginning of the study to serve as “controls” had no comparable achievement gains over the same five years. Schools in both groups were challenged by histories of low achievement, large numbers of English-language learners, and high percentages of students receiving free...