Public Impact News & Views

The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are the tip of a mammoth iceberg of racial injustice in our nation.

Behind these three injustices are millions of others, large and small, that, when unaddressed, leave those in power unchecked and emboldened to perpetuate more. As loud as the shouting of protestors may be right now, the sound of silence at the routine, everyday wrongs is the most deafening.

When a Black man in his own yard is assumed to be an intruder. When a birdwatcher is threatened for politely asking a white woman to follow park rules. When a shopper is followed around the store because of the color of her skin. When the promotion goes elsewhere, the pay is lower, and the police baton is wielded sooner. None of these are due to the actions of the victims, but all because of their race. This isn’t just unfair: It’s systematic, psychological warfare.

All of us at Public Impact are grieving with loss and sickened by all of this.

So, what will we do? Our commitment and resolve to fight injustice are only strengthened by current events, and we stand with the many partner organizations making and bolstering these same commitments.

Internally, we will continue to: hold routine, intentional conversations that address racism head on; review and correct policies and management actions for bias, racism, and unfairness; and seek and support a diverse workforce in their professional success. We commit to making improvements every year, knowing we can always do more, and should. We commit to continuing to work toward being an anti-racist organization by ensuring that all team members understand the history of racism in American education, holding ourselves accountable to people of color, and empowering people of color.

Externally, we will continue to make Public Impact’s mission the focus of our time and energies: to improve education dramatically for all students, especially low-income students, students of color, and other students whose needs historically have not been well met. We will continue to partner with educators to achieve this mission. We will improve our work to combat racism within schools and to promote a more equitable, safe, and joyful education system and world for all students. We will share materials our team has developed to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion with other organizations in the field, and seek their wisdom, too.

But we and other education reform organizations must acknowledge that the disparities affecting Black people in our country occur regardless of education levels. Therefore, we also stand with the Black community and others demanding broader, dramatic changes for justice, accountability, equity, and the opportunity to live free from fear. We commit to continuing to do the work of reflecting on our own role in dismantling racism and speaking up more often.

We commit to working with our past, current, and future colleagues in the field for systemic change, knowing that single organizations and political leaders have not achieved the transformation needed to stop racial violence and discrimination.

With grief, anger, and hearts hungry for change,

Public Impact

Districts and schools are confronting the learning loss caused by missed school time so far. Opportunity Culture schools—90 percent of which are Title I—have a special responsibility and opportunity to reverse that learning loss with the same method they’ve used for years: highly connective, high-standards instruction that helps more students achieve high-growth learning. Multi-Classroom Leadership by teachers with a high-growth track record is the foundation.

What can that look like if some students and teachers need to stay home, or if schools open, then shut, in waves in the coming school year?

A new working draft from Public Impact—Multi-Classroom Leadership with Students and Teachers in Multiple Locations: School Model Options—offers three detailed scheduling and staffing model options for Opportunity Culture schools faced with those conditions, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each. We will continue to develop these and other options through feedback and experience; send us your feedback here.

Districts not using Opportunity Culture may also find these useful for planning, and may be able to introduce modified Multi-Classroom Leadership quickly; contact us for help. [Read more…]

To understand how North Carolina’s 115 school districts are dealing with school closures, Public Impact and EducationNC joined forces to develop the NC District Response to COVID-19 School Closures Database. Read more about the database below, as well as an opinion piece on what the data tell us so far from Public Impact’s co-presidents.

Why a Database?

We decided to do this after seeing the informative database that the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) developed last month, which tracks how the nation’s largest public school districts have shifted instruction, student support, and organizational operations. Our database is just a start, with missing pieces to be filled in and updated as responses change.

Organized by 11 indicators—each falling into one of three categories: curriculum, instruction, and equity/access—our database pulls information from district websites and social media, plus responses from an EducationNC survey sent to all North Carolina superintendents. The database will highlight districts’ creative approaches to disseminating information and implementing at-home learning strategies, as well as challenges, such as technology. We hope education leaders and policymakers can use this information to determine the best ways to support schools, educators, and students.

See the EdNC post about the database for more details, including how to use it, and send your feedback to EdNC’s Molly Osborne as we continue to update it and analyze the trends within districts.

We thank EdNC for the opportunity to work together on this database and for their excellent, ongoing work to provide nonpartisan news, data, and research about the major trends and challenges facing education in North Carolina.

Next Steps for the State and Districts—Opinion

Public Impact’s co-presidents, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, took a close look at what the data tell us so far. You can read their full perspective piece here, on EdNC.org.

Their finding in a nutshell: Very few of the state’s 115 districts are ready to provide high-growth student learning with students and teachers at home. How could they be? None of the districts expected this situation, but now that it may be here to stay for a while, it’s time to address some missing elements: technology to connect all students with teachers, protocols for using technology well, and the support teachers need to ensure high-growth learning—especially for our most vulnerable students.

The Hassels looked at the data with the belief that has guided them through two decades of work: All students can make high learning growth, despite enormous challenges—if they and their educators have the right guidance and resources. Both research and the stories of educators who have made it happen in the most difficult of circumstances tell us this.

But the research shows that overall, online-only learning has failed students. As North Carolina districts turn to some form of online learning, the Hassels write, state leaders must provide the guidance, resources, and support to help districts provide technology and support for it; set clear expectations for the frequency, duration, and nature of videoconference learning; and expand small-team leadership by high-growth teachers, or “multi-classroom leaders,” rapidly, so that all teachers are part of a team getting strong instructional guidance and support, and frequent collaboration.

North Carolina districts have a long way to go to meet these goals; read the details in the Hassels’ column, and we’ll have more to come in the next few months. As the Hassels write:

“There’s still a lot to learn about how to make school-at-home as effective as possible. We’ve begun to examine how Opportunity Culture schools with multi-classroom leaders are responding, and we’re very excited to work with EdNC to document what’s happening statewide.

“As we continue to update this database, we hope to also continue together sharing stories, emerging data, and possible next steps needed to achieve that vision: all students making the high-growth learning of which they are capable, even in these challenging times.”

Read their full column here.

Opportunity Culture Fellows are educators with a track record of high-growth student learning who lead more students, fellow teachers, and, as principals or assistant principals, whole schools. This week, we added to the collection of stories and tips from these field leaders focused on helping students learn—and supporting their social-emotional health—no matter what challenges they or their students face.

See links below to each educator’s story. They all shared their thoughts on what schools and districts should consider if at-home learning continues into the fall or recurs sporadically, including:

Team Leadership

Continue to Support and Develop Your Team’s Ability to Teach Well

—Have a distributed leadership structure in place, as Opportunity Culture provides. The shift to at-home teaching and learning is dramatically eased for Opportunity Culture schools, with principals supporting and supported by a leadership team of multi-classroom leaders, who in turn support small teaching teams. The built-in structures of support and collaboration shifted from in-person to videoconferences and phone calls, but otherwise stayed largely the same.

—Maintain multi-classroom leader (MCL) team routines: Multi-classroom leaders continue to meet at least weekly online as a team for planning and student learning data analysis, and in one-on-one meetings with each team teacher. They also continue online with coaching, co-teaching, modeling instruction, and leading small groups.

—Encourage teachers to fill in for one another. The stresses on teachers who are caring for their own children or other family members at home were high on Principal Kristen Boyd’s mind. Encouraging teachers on the same teams to alternate or provide backup for videoconference teaching sessions may make an at-home teaching schedule more doable.

Instruction

Plan Ahead

—Keep aiming for high-standards, high-growth instruction. “Don’t think about any barriers right now,” Principal Jeremy Baugh said. “Just pretend that every single kid is online, they’re going to show up to your class when they’re supposed to show up—what exactly would that look like?” That exercise, Baugh said, opened his team up to create a better environment for learning. [Read more…]