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Public Impact News & Views

Welcome to the Public Impact blog, offering news and views from the Public Impact team. Questions or concerns? Contact editor Sharon Kebschull Barrett.

Q&A: Meet an Opportunity Culture Excellent Teacher

written by Jiye Grace Han and Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 5, 2013

Meet Romain Bertrand: middle school math teacher and Opportunity Culture enthusiast. As this school year winds down, he’s already thoroughly looking forward to the next—when he will become a Multi-Classroom Leader at Ranson IB Middle School, taking accountability for the learning results of 700 students. At Ranson, a Project L.I.F.T. school in Charlotte, N.C., Bertrand sees the opportunities of its new Opportunity Culture—to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, and develop other teachers—giving him and others exactly the sort of recognition and respect he says teachers now sorely lack.

Relaxing after school with his kids

Bertrand grew up in Avignon, in the south of France, the son of teachers who both went on to become principals. After teaching middle school math in France for five years, he came to the U.S. through the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based VIF International Education, which placed him in Charlotte, teaching seventh- and eighth-grade math for five years. “It became obvious after 10 years of teaching that I finally found my groove, and I saw that I could consistently get my students to enjoy math and become passionate about it, and to grow,” says Bertrand (relaxing at right with his children).

[Read more…]

In the News: Opportunity Culture Appearances

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 31, 2013

Recent Opportunity Culture appearances:

  • Schools Test New Ways to Deploy Teachers: How Project L.I.F.T. schools in Charlotte are creating an Opportunity Culture to attract and retain top teachers, at Heartland.org. This includes a bit about L.I.F.T. teacher Romain Bertrand–watch this space next week for an Q&A with this excellent teacher who can’t wait to see an Opportunity Culture in place that allows him to stay in the classroom and extend his reach to many more students.
  • Opportunity Culture: Not All Pay Raises Should Be Alike: A brief look by the A+ Education Partnership at what’s happening in Alabama and the need to keep great teachers in the classroom.
  • How (and Why) Teachers Should Get Started with Blended Learning: A look on Edudemic.com at the infographic recently produced to accompany the report Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning Can Improve the Teaching Profession, part of the Digital Learning Now! Smart Series, which Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel, Public Impact’s co-directors, wrote with John Bailey of Digital Learning Now! and Carri Schneider and Tom Vander Ark of Getting Smart.

3 Nashville Schools Create Paid Student Teacher Role

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 22, 2013

In Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture school models, we envision roles for a variety of support staff who help excellent teachers and teams extend their reach to more students. Examples include learning coaches, digital lab monitors, assistant teachers, and tutors. These staff members don’t work in isolation, but as critical parts of their teams.

These positions typically have shorter workweeks than teachers (40 hours or less versus teachers’ actual average of 50 to 55) and are narrower in scope, making pay lower. The pay differential allows a district to provide substantially higher pay for teacher-leaders—proven excellent teachers who take full responsibility for leading their teams. Under the leadership of these excellent teachers, other teachers and support staff can learn and succeed.

If you think that sounds like a great environment for student teachers to learn great teaching from the start, the iZone initiative of Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) agrees. Beginning in 2013–14, MNPS is creating a paid one-year “aspiring teacher” role targeting student teachers, available at three schools in the iZone.

The district has worked with local teacher preparation programs to develop the aspiring teacher role. In the United States, student teachers rarely get paid. In contrast, as district employees, these aspiring teachers will receive a salary and benefits, along with credit for being student teachers while they serve full-time in three Opportunity Culture schools under the district’s highest-performing educators. They also get first shots at full-time jobs at the end of their year.  The aspiring teachers’ $15,800 salary and benefits make it much more attractive than a standard unpaid student teacher position.

[Read more…]

How City-Based Groups Can Support Ed Tech Quality

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 15, 2013

In A Better Blend, we explained how schools can boost student outcomes from digital learning by combining it with staffing models that allow excellent teachers to both reach more students and help good teachers excel. Digital learning holds great promise—but only if we combine its power to personalize learning with the power of excellent teaching.

What else could increase the chances of high-quality technology use in our schools? Public Impact has written two reports out this week for CEE-Trust (the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust) showing how city-based funders and reformers can help, by catalyzing and scaling up high-quality blended learning in their cities.

[Read more…]

In the News: Opportunity Culture Appearances

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 10, 2013

Opportunity Culture recent appearances in the press and elsewhere:

  • The full guidelines for the latest round of the Investing in Innovation (i3) grants are out, and they include strong encouragement from the U.S. Department of Education to design, validate, and scale up innovations that extend the reach of excellent teachers. The competition requires applicants to address one of a handful of “Absolute Priorities,” one of which is improving teacher effectiveness. Applicants can meet this priority by “extending highly effective teachers’ reach to serve more students” (see full language in the guidelines).  They can also address “creating career pathways with differentiated opportunities and roles for teachers or principals, which may include differentiated compensation.” Those are right up an Opportunity Culture’s alley–so if you’re looking for resources on to meet that priority, check out all the materials on OpportunityCulture.org; see our complete list of tools to help understand an Opportunity Culture and design Opportunity Culture schools.
  • Public Impact Co-director Bryan C. Hassel talks about extending the reach of excellent teachers, for more pay, within budget, in an Opportunity Culture–listen to his interview at School Leadership Briefing. That’s in the current issue; for information on using digital instruction to help extend the reach of excellent teachers, listen to his February 2012 talk, Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction.
  • Charlotte’s WFAE reports on the flood of job applications for positions that extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students and to their teaching peers at Project L.I.F.T., an Opportunity Culture pilot site in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district.
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Blog Topics

  • Big Spring ISD
  • Blended Learning
  • Building Support for Change
  • Cabarrus County Schools
  • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
  • Charter School Authorizing
  • Charter Schools
  • Collective Bargaining District
  • Creating an Opportunity Culture
  • Digital Learning
  • Education Technology
  • Educator Preparation
  • Extending Excellent Teachers’ Reach
  • Financial Sustainability
  • Fulton County Schools
  • Harlandale ISD
  • High-Performing Principals
  • High-Quality Charter Schools
  • Indianapolis Public Schools
  • Metro Nashville Public Schools
  • Multi-Classroom Leaders
  • New Orleans schools
  • New School Models
  • Newark Public Schools
  • Opportunity Culture Case Studies
  • Opportunity Culture Initiative
  • Opportunity Culture Series
  • Philanthropy in Education
  • Principal Career Paths
  • Project L.I.F.T.
  • Recruit and Retain Excellent Teachers
  • Rural Schools
  • School Finance
  • School Leadership
  • School Restarts
  • School Turnarounds
  • STEM
  • Student Growth
  • Students in an Opportunity Culture
  • Syracuse City School District
  • Teacher Career Paths
  • Teacher Evaluation
  • Teacher Pay
  • Teacher Recruitment
  • Teacher Residencies
  • Teacher Specialization
  • Teacher Voice
  • Teacher-Leaders

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