In 1969, a concern with the deep inequity of students' experiences and opportunities in traditional school systems first drove social studies teacher Rick DuFour to begin advocating for the kind of reforms that would jell into his transformative model, Professional Learning Communities (PLC) at Work, some 16 years later. The core belief of the PLC at Work model is that all students should have access to the most rigorous curriculum and that all students should learn. Becky DuFour, a former elementary school teacher, coordinator of gifted and fine arts education, and elementary school principal in Franklin County Public Schools in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and Williamsburg-James City County Schools in Williamsburg, Virginia, heard DuFour speak at a workshop in 1999 and was inspired to bring the PLC at Work concept back to Boones Mill, Virginia in the Franklin County district, where she was a principal. Under Becky's direction, Boones Mill Elementary School began implementing the PLC at Work process at the beginning of the 2000-2001 school year. By the end of that year, the school had experienced higher levels of student learning and a greater sense of efficacy among teachers. Today, Rick and Becky DuFour are business partners as well as husband and wife, having retired from public school education in 2002 to write, consult and conduct numerous institutes, workshops and summits across the country. The PLC at Work model distinguishes itself from other PLCs primarily through the deep degree of efficacy in implementation it requires of individual teachers, who meet formally each week and follow a specific process to ensure success for each student. For each unit of instruction, teachers agree on the essential skills each student will learn, how much time they will devote to each, and what the assessment process will be for gathering evidence of student learning. Once they have evidence, they identify students who were not successful, discuss what may have caused the difficulties, and share strategies from teachers who successfully taught the unit. If the entire team finds that all their students were unsuccessful, they seek resources for learning how to teach the concepts better. The team also discusses strategies for enriching and extending learning for students who have demonstrated high proficiency. The PLC at Work model also emphasizes the necessary role of leadership in schools for building consensus, clarifying purpose and vision, putting structures in place to support teacher collaboration, and assisting the learning process by helping teachers identify and overcome major obstacles to increasing student achievement.