High-Payoff Strategies

Chapter 7Facilitating Learning Communities

Math scores are now the highest in the school's history. That's due to the learning community.

— An elementary school principal

Developing and facilitating learning communities is a high-payoff strategy whereby group members engage together in solving common problems directly correlated with improving student achievement and building on the culture. Research has found that such learning communities are “a strong predictor of instructional practices that are strongly associated with student achievement” (Louis, 2009, p. 37).

This strategy goes by many different names. Sometimes called professional learning communities, communities of practice, peer learning, data teams, inquiry groups, learning teams, ...