Professional learning communities in a collaborative effort set out to help their students reach state benchmarks.

The seventh and eighth grade science PLC at Armand Larive Middle School, Robert Doherty, Neely Kirwan and Sandra Rice has all but set the standard for everyone in their school and the Hermiston School District to reach.

The three teachers helped 97 percent of the school’s science students reach benchmarks in an area that in comparison was at 88 percent last year.

“It is phenomenal,” said Bryn Browning, assistant superintendent education services on Friday.

Browning said the work Doherty, Kirwan, and Rice do, collaborating and exchanging information on different teaching methods to make each other successful, is found at other schools throughout the district but Armand was the highest in achievement.

“I hope to get all of our teams to that point though,”?Browning said.

It’s an achievement the three colleagues supervisor, Armand principal Steve Carnes, could not be more proud of.

“They work exceptionally together as a PLC and set themselves apart from their colleagues and the state,” he said Friday.

Carnes added to see the science student’s benchmark achievement at 97 percent was a pleasant surprise after Kirwan had told him they were hoping this year for 80 percent.

But he said when one sees everything the science PLC does one can see how they’ve had the success they’ve accomplished.

Carnes said all of the teachers at Armand Larive work to get the most out of their students during testing, the science team however, he added has set the bar very high for them.

“Those teachers are problem solvers and very efficient in aligning their curriculums and working together,”?he said, adding they help each other build units for assessment and refine them.

In doing so, he said, they’ve removed the gap in the level of achievement of their students regardless of race, language barriers, sex, or disabilities.

Like Browning, Carnes hopes the other PLCs can learn from what Doherty, Kirwan and Rice has accomplished and put it into their own programs, despite the differences in subject areas.

“It’s different in other (subject) areas because subjects build on each other,” he said.