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.
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.
