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Opportunity Culture by the Numbers: 2017-18 Dashboard Updates

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on March 16, 2018

Quick Stats from the Opportunity Culture Dashboard, updated for 2017-18:

  •  225+ schools committed to Opportunity Culture
  • 1,450+ teachers with advanced roles or on-the-job development
  • 41,000+ students reached by excellent teachers extending their reach
  • $3.3 million in extra pay for teachers in 2017–18; $10 million since Opportunity Culture was implemented in the first schools five years ago
  • 22 Opportunity Culture sites in 9 states—and growing
  • Strong educator support: 97% of surveyed multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) and 81% of all school staff involved in OC want Opportunity Culture to continue in their schools
  • High growth by MCL-led team teachers: Math gains rose from 50th percentile of teachers to 75th–85th, reading from 50th percentile of teachers to 66th–72nd

Public Impact, which created and leads the national Opportunity Culture initiative, updates the Opportunity Culture dashboard annually.


Details:

  • Schools—Opportunity Culture now has 228 schools committed; OC grew from 7 schools implementing in 2013–14 to 111 schools in 2017–18. Forty-six more schools have begun designing (planning for implementation) for 2018–19, and states and districts have committed to launch Opportunity Culture in an additional 71 schools in the next few years. Schools, cities, and states continue to join Opportunity Culture throughout each year.
  • Sites—9 states now have a total of 22 Opportunity Culture sites covering a range of urban, suburban, and rural schools.
  • Students—More than 41,000 students were reached by one or more Opportunity Culture teachers. Nothing matters more for students than getting excellent teaching consistently: Excellent teachers help students learn more, and, as multi-classroom leaders, they can help other teachers produce higher-growth student learning, too. Research also says that teachers producing high growth develop students’ higher-order thinking skills.
  • Teaching Roles—There were 331 teachers in advanced roles and 1,135 teachers receiving on-the-job development on teacher-led teams. Advanced Opportunity Culture roles are reserved for teachers with a track record of high-growth student learning. Team teacher roles are held by teachers with a typical range of prior effectiveness. Schools designing Opportunity Culture before 2017–18 used a variety of roles to extend teachers’ reach. Schools designing in 2017–18 and after will all use Multi-Classroom Leadership, embedding other roles within MCLs’ small teams.
  • Teacher Surveys—In anonymous surveys, 97 percent of multi-classroom leaders and 81 percent of all school staff involved in OC want Opportunity Culture to continue in their schools.  94 percent of MCLs also reported a positive impact on staff collaboration and student achievement; 96 percent agreed that they have new leadership opportunities; and 95 percent agreed they have better pay opportunities and the chance to reach more students. And 96 percent of MCLs and 89 percent of all OC teachers agree that they receive feedback that can help them improve teaching.
  • Pay—$3.3 million was reallocated to higher teacher pay in 2017–18; $10 million has been reallocated since OC began in 2013. The highest pay supplement was $23,000 (for MCLs). The average MCL supplement was $12,247, or 21 percent of the average teacher salary in the U.S. OC supplements for all teachers ranged from $1,500 to $23,000.
  • Student Results—A study from the American Institutes for Research and the Brookings Institution showed that students in classrooms of team teachers led by MCLs showed sizeable academic gains. The team teachers in the study were, on average, at the 50th percentile in the student learning gains they produced before joining a team led by an MCL. After joining the teams, they produced learning gains equivalent to those of teachers in the top quartile in math and nearly that in reading.

See the dashboard for more details.

Public Impact analyzes the dashboard results so we can continually improve Opportunity Culture materials and our work with schools and districts. Our goals are to reach all students with excellent teaching and all teachers with outstanding career opportunities and support.

“We are grateful to the hundreds of teachers, principals, and district staff nationally who have stepped out of their comfort zones to achieve more for students through Opportunity Culture,” said Emily Ayscue Hassel, co-founder of the Opportunity Culture initiative and Public Impact co-president. “Public Impact treasures both the feedback from these educators and the hard data to make Opportunity Culture even better for people as it grows.”


How Does an Opportunity Culture Work?

In each Opportunity Culture school, a team of teachers and administrators adopts new roles to reach more students with teachers who have produced high-growth student learning. Multi-classroom leaders lead a small teaching team, providing guidance and frequent on-the-job coaching while continuing to teach, often by leading small-group instruction. Accountable for the results of all students in the team, they also earn supplements averaging 20 percent (and up to 50 percent) of teacher pay, within the regular school budget. The schools redesign schedules to provide additional school-day time for teacher planning, coaching, and collaboration.

Learn more at OpportunityCulture.org; hear from Opportunity Culture educators in teacher-written columns and videos.

We welcome your questions and feedback; contact us here.

 

Opportunity Culture Voices: How My West Texas School Elevated Struggling Young Readers (and Their Teachers)

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 21, 2017

For years, my school, Washington Elementary in Big Spring, Texas, struggled to meet all our students’ literacy needs. We group students in tiers, as in the “Response to Intervention” model, but each year we were still left with extremely large groups in Tier II and Tier III — struggling students and chronically struggling students. Each year, we tried to reinvent the wheel to increase our student success, but to no avail — until last year.

Most of Washington’s students come from low socioeconomic status households. Several have grandparents or someone other than parents raising them, several come to school hungry and dirty, many have parents who work multiple jobs and cannot help with homework, and quite a few have at least one parent in prison. When small children are forced to deal with situations like these, school often takes a back seat. Nevertheless, my coworkers and I must make sure they receive a quality education.

[Read more…]

Is Multi-Classroom Leadership Right for You?

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on March 24, 2016

If you’re interested in:

–Spreading your excellent teaching to many more students

–Leading a team of teaching peers toward the great outcomes you’ve gotten with your students by:

  • collaborating with them
  • co-teaching
  • coaching
  • co-planning
  • giving (and getting) consistent, on-the-job, genuine professional development and support

–Taking responsibility for the learning of all students in the team

–Making significantly higher pay for taking on this leadership and responsibility

…then a Multi-Classroom Leader role is waiting for your application!

Schools across the country have posted their Opportunity Culture positions, and it’s an advantage to apply now, not later in the spring or summer. See the links on our Jobs page, and find how you can make a difference in many more students’ lives.

And if you know teachers who want to reach more students without leading a team, or work on a multi-classroom leader’s team, share the jobs link with them as well–to find blended-learning roles and other expanded impact and team-teaching positions–all of which offer the strong support and collaboration that make Opportunity Culture jobs so popular.

Opportunity Culture Results: Dashboard 2.0

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on December 18, 2015

Note: The Opportunity Culture Dashboard has been updated. See the most recent dashboard results here.

22,000+ students reached by Opportunity Culture teachers, more than 800 teachers in advanced or team roles, $2 million in higher pay in one year alone, and more high growth and less low growth than other schools: These are just a few results from the schools in districts launching an Opportunity Culture. Public Impact’s expanded, interactive dashboard on OpportunityCulture.org shows progress in the Opportunity Culture initiative.
dashboard with arrow

Opportunity Culture (OC) now includes 72 schools, either implementing in 2015–16 (51 schools) or designing their OC plans for fall 2016–17 (21). The initiative launched with 7 schools in 2013–14. More sites and schools are joining.

In the 35 OC schools implementing in 2014–15, we’ve already seen that 45% more make high growth and 46% fewer make low growth than other schools in the same states, even though most OC schools are implementing their new models gradually over two or three years.

[Read more…]

How to Build an Opportunity Culture: New, Free Toolkit

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 9, 2015

Extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within available budgets. Provide much more on-the-job, school-day collaboration, planning time, and support to teachers. When a district decides it wants to do this, then what?

Big changes demand big help, and we’ve just released our free Opportunity Culture Toolkit, which walks districts and schools through all the phases of building an Opportunity Culture. In an Opportunity Culture, great teachers and the teams they lead extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget and without forcing class-size increases. It’s happening now, in districts as diverse as Syracuse, N.Y., and Big Spring, Texas, and we’ve used lessons from all the Opportunity Culture districts in building the kit.

This toolkit will help leaders of districts, schools, and charter management organizations engage their boards, central staff, school leaders, and teachers in developing, implementing, and refining an Opportunity Culture in their schools. Partners helping education leaders with organizing, school design, technology, or other elements of the change process will also find this valuable.

From making the initial district commitment to making district- and school-level decisions, implementing an Opportunity Culture, and evaluating and refining it, the Opportunity Culture Toolkit shows users how it’s done, with multiple tools for each of the seven steps along the way.

The kit begins with an overview–an introduction to an Opportunity Culture and the school models and career paths at its foundation. The rest is organized into the key design and implementation phases, with related tools for each. Each phase includes a set of objectives, detailed action steps for accomplishing the objectives, and links to relevant tools and resources.

New and updated tools are added regularly, based on Public Impact’s work with leading districts nationally that are implementing an Opportunity Culture. The first Opportunity Culture schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Nashville, Tenn., have been joined so far by many more Charlotte schools, the schools in Syracuse and Big Spring, and schools in Cabarrus County, N.C., and Indianapolis, Ind. The Texas Education Agency has announced that it will be choosing additional Texas districts in the coming year. Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative in 2011. See “Where is this happening?” on our revamped Opportunity Culture website for more information.

Texas Launches Statewide Opportunity Culture Initiative

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 19, 2015

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has made Texas the first state to support multiple districts in creating anb Opportunity Culture, joining the national initiative designed to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets.

The Big Spring Independent School District, an eight-campus district in a town of about 28,000 people in west Texas, is recruiting for its first year of implementation in the 2015–16 school year, and the TEA is identifying additional districts to support in this work.

Big Spring is leading the way for small cities and towns in Texas and across the country to adopt Opportunity Culture models. These models use job redesign and age-appropriate technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget.

Opportunity Culture teachers typically work in collaborative teams led by excellent teachers. Teams have in-school planning and collaboration time together and are formally accountable for all of the students they reach. Teachers in Opportunity Culture districts in Tennessee, North Carolina, and New York are earning pay supplements as high as 50 percent of their state’s average teacher pay.

”Texas is committed to providing pathways for advancement and recognition for our best teachers,” said Texas Commissioner of Education Michael Williams. “Through our support of Opportunity Culture at the state level, our goal is to quantify success in districts by working collaboratively with teachers and principals to support greater student achievement for all students.”

[Read more…]

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