3 PLC Pitfalls According to DuFour

If you’ve spent time in education over the last 20 years, you’ve been impacted by strategies developed and popularized by Richard DuFour. The educator and researcher authored influential books like 1998’s Professional Learning Communities at Work and the bestselling Learning By Doing, a handbook for putting his PLC practices to work.

DuFour’s legacy continues to influence educators as they build out their PLC process to improve student outcomes. But DuFour warned against “dangerous detours and seductive shortcuts” that may be holding your PLC back. Below are three common mistakes he identified, plus practical solutions to help your teams focus on what matters most: student learning.

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1. You remove teachers from the process.

Leaders are often tempted to “take work off of teachers’ plates” by having someone else make key decisions around curriculum, standards, and assessments. While this tendency comes from a good place, removing teachers from the process can do real harm to your PLC.

Your district may be suffering from this pitfall if teachers aren’t involved in:

• Identifying essential standards
• Creating assessments
• Analyzing evidence of student learning
• Creating systems of intervention

Instead, leaders do the work themselves, delegate to other educators, or use pre-made resources or technology. Well-meaning leaders will take shortcuts that cut out teachers, like handing out state frameworks instead of discussing them, delegating curriculum design to a small committee, or letting the textbook drive instruction.

DuFour says, “Remember this fundamental truth about implementing the PLC process: When you remove educators from doing the work, you remove them from the learning.” When teachers aren’t part of these conversations, they lose ownership of the work and, more importantly, lose the professional learning that comes from doing it together.

Solution: Instead of shielding teachers from the work, school administrators must step back and empower teachers to collaborate and face it together. Leaders can support this goal by fiercely protecting PLC time, ensuring access to high-quality resources, and providing guidance and clear expectations—not the finished product.

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2. Your team isn’t developing common formative assessments.

One of DuFour’s questions that all PLCs must ask: “How do we know our students are learning?” Common assessments not only answer this question, they also inform the next PLC stage: collectively improving instructional practices.

But why build new common assessments when schools already use pre-built state tests, AP exams, screeners, and benchmark assessments? DuFour explains, “These tests are rarely perfectly aligned to the essential standards that a teacher team has identified for a specific unit of study. Therefore, in the PLC process, the team develops one or more common assessments for each unit of instruction.”

Another benefit is the process of developing common assessments. When team members collaborate to create assessments by building shared knowledge and collectively making decisions, they improve their teaching knowledge and professional practice.

Staff may be concerned that the assessments will reflect poorly on them as educators. To address this problem, DuFour says leaders must “make commitments to the staff that common assessment data will not be used in a punitive way to formally or informally evaluate teacher performance.” Low assessment results mean that the instructional practices did not meet students’ learning needs, not that the teaching is inferior.

Solution: Administrators can support teachers in building assessments by providing them with resources like:

• High-stakes assessment frameworks to familiarize staff with the format and rigor
• Student data on past assessments
• Assessment rubric examples
• Research and expert recommendations
• Past tests developed by PLC team members

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3. Dedicated intervention time is inconvenient or infrequent.

Systematic intervention is the answer to another of DuFour’s critical questions: “How will we respond when our students don’t learn?” But schools often treat intervention as something to “squeeze in” around the school day, as opposed to prioritizing it as an essential part of student achievement. 

Before- and after-school sessions seem like a convenient solution, but they exclude the very students who need help most. As DuFour notes, “Some students cannot come to school early or stay late, so we must provide help during the school day, when students are required to be at school and all staff members are available to assist.”

Single weekly 30-minute sessions are not enough to address the gap either. Interventions must be built into the daily rhythm of school, not as an afterthought. But beware of pulling students from core instruction. Making students miss out on key learning defeats the purpose of intervention and can further widen learning gaps.

Solution: To meet the equity goals of a PLC, schedule intervention time during school hours and make it required, not voluntary. As DuFour says, “Some students will not voluntarily take advantage of additional support. Because our mission is to ensure that all students succeed, students will not be given the option of failing. Interventions will be directive. Students will be required, not invited, to attend.”

Separate intervention time from core curriculum so those who need focused support receive it while proficient learners gain enrichment opportunities to extend their learning.

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Focus Your PLC on What Counts

DuFour believed that PLCs succeed when educators collectively accept responsibility for every student’s learning. That means teams must engage deeply in the work of identifying essential standards, developing common assessments, analyzing results, and making a plan to address gaps. All of this work is important and cannot be skipped, delegated, or deprioritized.

Educators must enter a PLC with the mindset of improving student learning—and their own. DuFour reminds us that it’s not enough to give students the opportunity to learn: “If we are to fulfill the moral imperative of our profession, we can no longer settle for simply giving students the chance to learn; we must ensure high levels of learning for each student in our collective care.”

By understanding and avoiding these common pitfalls, educators can stay true to the mission at the heart of PLCs: guaranteeing that all students learn at high levels, without exception.