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.

The response? In the three-week application window, the district received nearly 100 applications.

“We thought that the ‘aspiring teacher’ role would appeal to graduate students earning their degree in teaching, but we didn’t anticipate just how many candidates would apply,” said Alan Coverstone, executive director of the iZone. “We’re really excited about the type of talent this role can bring into our schools, especially the schools engaged in some of our most ambitious turnaround efforts.”

MNPS is targeting students in a master’s degree program, at least this year. Aspiring teachers may also come from other backgrounds or remain as an aspiring teacher beyond the first year, though the district expects one year to be the norm.

Aspiring teachers will do much of what student teachers do now. But MNPS expects this to be a more robust experience as they train under a school’s highest-performing educators, participating fully as members of the core instructional staff in planning, professional learning communities, and teaching. This role also lets aspiring teachers focus more than traditional student teachers would on relationships with students and families, aspects the district considers critical to successful teaching. Overall, this training should be more rigorous than typical part-time student teaching roles and deepen student teachers’ engagement. And it pays.

Equally important, MNPS expects to build a pool of candidates who will have the knowledge, skills, and experience to be highly effective teachers faster once they become full-fledged teachers—potentially staying at the same school following their “aspiring” year. These teachers may have a better shot at entering the profession on a clear trajectory for professional growth and leadership than those doing traditional, part-time student teaching.

When we first started drafting Opportunity Culture school models two years ago, a group of elite Teach Plus Policy Fellows advised us. The “paid student teacher turned full-fledged team member” was their idea. We’re delighted to see their brilliant thoughts coming to life, and we hope to see more similar efforts soon.

The Opportunity Culture models are full of career paths and variations that solve so many of the problems caused by isolated, inflexible, uniform teaching roles in most schools today.

In the case of student teachers: Why not enter the teaching profession by learning from the best, on the job, and getting paid for it? It’s a question aspiring teachers across the nation should be asking.

New Career Paths

Public Impact has published an overview of multiple career paths that schools can use to expand opportunities for their teachers. These career paths match Public Impact’s school models that use job redesign and technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget. Most of these school models create new roles and collaborative teams enabling all teachers and staff to develop and contribute to excellence. We call this an “Opportunity Culture.” In an Opportunity Culture, all teachers have career opportunities dependent upon their excellence, leadership, and student impact. Advancement allows more pay and greater reach. When teachers reach more students, per-pupil funds are freed to cover higher pay and other priorities.

Teacher and Staff Selection, Development, & Evaluation Toolkit

This toolkit includes job descriptions, competencies, and companion tools that may be used to select, evaluate, and develop teachers and staff. These materials are built for six of the more than 20 school models described here. The jobs included in the toolkit cover most of the other school models as well. Some schools may combine school models, and in turn will need to alter the job descriptions and other materials accordingly. Schools must adapt these materials to fit each school setting and to incorporate additional selection, evaluation, and development priorities.

Shooting for Stars: Cross-Sector Lessons for Retaining High-Performing Educators

This report, written with support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, identifies four common strategies employed by other sectors to disproportionately retain high performers and discusses how committed education leaders could begin applying these strategies right now. Read more…

Developing Education Talent Pipelines for Charter Schools: A Citywide Approach

This white paper highlights six indicators of a robust talent pipeline so that charter supporters of all kinds—including charter school leaders, talent providers, charter support organizations, philanthropies, and politicians—can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their own efforts. It also shows through the examples of Indianapolis and New Orleans how charter supporters have been able to grow the supply of effective charter school teachers and leaders by focusing on these indicators. This white paper is part of a three-piece series continuing the discussion from a National Charter School Resource Center / U.S. Department of Education conference exploring emerging city-based movements that embrace high-quality charters as an integral component of their reform strategy.

Teacher Tenure Reform: Applying Lessons from the Civil Service and Higher Education

Could redesigned K-12 teacher tenure actually improve student learning? Could it help to grow the size and power of an elite teaching corps that reaches far more children? This paper examines lessons from higher education and the civil service and applies fresh thinking to offer new “elite” and “inclusive” tenure designs and a framework for policymakers who want to make tenure meaningful. Today, K-12 tenure is granted to nearly all teachers, with almost no criteria, and within the first few years of teaching. As a tool to strengthen our nation’s schools and children’s prospects, tenure has failed. The culture of tenure and costs of associated pay scales also have created a nearly universal glass ceiling for the best teachers. But discussions about tenure nearly always fall into the “keep it or scrap it” camps. This paper inserts level-headed thinking into the K-12 tenure debate.  A brief presentation, prepared for the Joyce Foundation, outlines key findings

Importing Leaders for School Turnarounds: Lessons and Opportunities

One of the biggest challenges in education today is identifying talented candidates to successfully lead turnarounds of persistently low-achieving schools. Evidence suggests that the traditional principal pool is already stretched to capacity and cannot supply enough leaders to fix failing schools. But potentially thousands of leaders capable of managing successful turnarounds work outside education, in nonprofit and health organizations, the military, and the private sector. If only a fraction of those leaders used their talents in education, we could increase the supply of school turnaround leaders significantly. In this report prepared by Public Impact for the University of Virginia’s Partnership for Leaders in Education, Julie Kowal and Emily Hassel explore lessons about when and how organizations in other sectors import leaders – including how they tempt people away, train them, and foster their success – to inform efforts by state and local leaders to import talent for failing schools.

Preparing for Growth: Human Capital Innovations in Charter Public Schools

Many have suggested that charter schools can be key agents in leading dramatic improvements in public education. However, the small number of highly-successful charter schools and charter management organizations currently in operation throughout the country will have to grow much faster in order to meet this challenge. To achieve that growth, they also will need a strong supply of great teachers and leaders. This report, for the Center for American Progress, by Christi Chadwick and Julie Kowal, looks at six leading charter management organizations (CMOs) – Green Dot, High Tech High, IDEA, KIPP, Rocketship, and YES Prep – and the strategies they have implemented to build the supply of high quality teachers and principals in their schools. The paper also presents barriers and challenges that still remain for these CMOs, as well as promising opportunities to support more rapid future growth.  A brief presentation, prepared for the Joyce Foundation, outlines key findings.

Beyond Classroom Walls: Developing Innovative Work Roles for Teachers

The job of “teacher” in most schools today remains centered on full-time classroom responsibilities that are defined by the location, timing, and schedule of the school day and a one-teacher-per-classroom model. But particularly in today’s budget climate, interest in quality-focused job redesigns is increasing among forward-thinking state, district, and charter school leaders. In this report, prepared by Julie Kowal and Dana Brinson for the Center for American Progress, we profile two organizations—the Rocketship Education network of charter schools and the Fairfax County, VA school district— that have redesigned the job of teacher to provide new types of leadership opportunities and let great teachers reach larger numbers of students.  A brief presentation, prepared for the Joyce Foundation, outlines key findings. Read more…

Competencies for Turnaround Success Series

Public Impact has developed a series of resources designed to support school turnarounds. The series includes guides and toolkits that help select turnaround leaders and teachers based on the competencies–or patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting–that enable them to be successful in turnarounds.

Expanding the Pipeline of Teachers and Principals in Urban Public Schools: Design Principles and Conditions for Success

(pdf) Meeting the significant demand for outstanding teachers and principals is a persistent challenge in many urban school systems. This report, prepared by Public Impact for the Cleveland Foundation and the George Gund Foundation, analyzes common themes among eighteen promising programs to attract and prepare teachers and principals for success in urban school systems.

Cultivating Success through Multiple Providers, A New State Strategy for Improving the Quality of Teacher Preparation

Co-authored by Bryan C. Hassel and Michele E. Sherburne (Chapter 8 of A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?, Harvard Education Publishing Group). This chapter explores a new state strategy for improving the quality of teacher preparation: authorizing a portfolio of providers. Under this strategy a state would cultivate a robust portfolio of providers of teacher preparation. These providers, including traditional purveyors of teacher education, nonprofit organizations and school districts, would serve as laboratories for diverse approaches to teacher education.