Financial Sustainability

Opportunity Culture in the News: How to Transform Education

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on March 13, 2015

How can state and district leaders transform education by extending the reach of great teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget? Read our latest thoughts this week:

On EdNC.org, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel exhort North Carolina’s leaders to focus on the destination–giving all students access to excellent teaching, consistently–and set the guideposts districts need to get there. “State leaders can transform North Carolina by funding a diverse set of districts to design financially sustainable, scalable advanced pay systems that reward excellent teachers for reach and leadership,” write the Hassels, co-directors of Public Impact and founders of the Opportunity Culture initiative.
On GettingSmart.com, the Hassels write about the challenges–and a possible solution–to the need for great school leaders at a time when schools must achieve deeper learning, not just learning basic skills. They call for a new model–one that combines Multi-Classroom Leadership with multi-school leadership.
And EducationNext.com highlights our video about the Opportunity Culture choices of Ranson IB Middle and Ashley Park PreK-8 in Charlotte.

Coming Monday: All about our latest Opportunity Culture video!

In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on January 30, 2015

New Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) Superintendent Ann Clark highlighted the district’s Opportunity Culture career paths in her “State of our Schools” speech Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reports*.

Discussing the need to be competitive on teacher pay to retain teachers, Clark pointed out how an Opportunity Culture helps great teachers stay in the classroom while making much more money, using such models as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps. Pay supplements for multi-classroom leaders can be as much as $23,000, or 50 percent more than average teacher pay in North Carolina, for example–within current school budgets.

Shortly into the first year of Opportunity Culture implementation in four schools, the district’s top leaders, including Clark, were so pleased that they decided to dramatically scale it up to reach nearly half the schools in the district by 2017-18. Now in their second year, those four schools were joined by 17 more, with up to eight more joining next year.

Learn more–fast!–about an Opportunity Culture in the new brief Opportunity Culture for Teaching and Learning: Introduction
Hear what teachers and administrators say about an Opportunity Culture in Voices on Video
Learn more about Charlotte’s early Opportunity Culture days and its recruiting success

*This article is no longer available online.

Opportunity Culture Principals Speak: “People Want to Be a Part of This”

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on December 3, 2014

Now, it’s the principals’ turn: We’ve shared videos of multi-classroom leaders and team teachers telling why they love their jobs in the Metro Nashville schools that have created an Opportunity Culture. Hear why the principals at Bailey STEM Magnet Middle School and Buena Vista Elementary call an Opportunity Culture “sustainable,” “innovative,” and the “it factor” in changing the game for students and teachers. These principals’ schools use multi-classroom leadership, setting up the feedback loops from team teaching, collaboration, and teacher-leadership that they and their teachers revel in.

“Absolutely the most powerful benefit is student achievement”

“You make sure that every single child is in a top-quality classroom”

“Teachers are applying at newfound rates to be a part of this work”

[Read more…]

5 Steps to Design Highly Paid Teacher Career Paths

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on October 29, 2014

To help all students reach their potential, district leaders must ensure that every student has consistent access to excellent teaching. Opportunity Culture compensation and career path structures help make that possible, and the new guide out today from Public Impact shows how.

Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide shows how districts can design teacher career paths that will keep excellent teachers in the classroom and extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget. When districts design these paths, they create opportunities:

for excellent teachers to reach more students directly and by leading teaching teams,
for solid teachers to contribute to excellence immediately, and
for all teachers to receive the support and development they deserve.

The full guide walks a district through the organizing steps and details of designing Opportunity Culture pay and career paths that fit its needs and values. It includes an overview of key Opportunity Culture concepts, graphics and explanations detailing new school models and roles, and assistance for evaluating the impact of different compensation design choices. The steps guide districts to ensuring financial sustainability and designing a complete career lattice.

[Read more…]

State Leaders: Set These Policies to Enable an Opportunity Culture

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on October 15, 2014

What students want— US map (3) great teachers every year–and what teachers want–career advancement without leaving teaching, on-the-job professional learning and collaboration, and the chance to help more students succeed–come together in an Opportunity Culture. What’s the missing piece? State policies to back up schools and districts and their educators committed to reaching many more students with excellent teachers and their teams, for more pay, within budget and without forcing class-size increases.

In the just-released Seizing Opportunity at the Top II policymakers’ checklist and full report, Public Impact takes the lessons we’ve learned in working with teachers and leaders in districts in four states and distills them into the “urgent” and “optimal” policies a state needs to enable pilot and statewide Opportunity Cultures. See the two-page checklist for a quick policy overview, then use the full brief for details on crafting new policies.

[Read more…]

Doing the Math on Opportunity Culture’s Early Impact

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 24, 2014

As we’ve noted in previous posts, schools continue to join the Opportunity Culture initiative, eager to work with teachers on redesigning their teaching roles and career paths. As the first year of implementation in Opportunity Culture pilot schools wound down, we looked at the impact of just the 31 leading-edge schools who had joined the initiative by April. (Six more high schools joined in May but are not included in these figures, as they hadn’t yet had a chance to make their Opportunity Culture plans).

[Read more…]

Opportunity Culture Schools: Showing N.C. How to Keep Teachers

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 23, 2014

For these CMS teachers, change doesn’t mean exodus*: In Friday’s Charlotte Observer, reporter Ann Doss Helms checked back in with Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) teachers who’d been in the news in the past year over their frustrations–reflected across North Carolina classrooms–with teacher pay turmoil in the state. Helms wrote:

After a year of frustration with low pay and challenging conditions, teachers Marie Calabro, Dave Hartzell and Justin Ashley have packed their boxes and left their jobs.

Despite talk of a teacher exodus from North Carolina, though, these three aren’t leaving the state–or even Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Calabro, who organized sidewalk rallies for teachers, and Hartzell, featured in an Observer article* on teacher pay, both switched schools to take higher-paying “opportunity culture” jobs that keep them in classrooms. The House and governor’s budget plans call for expanding that approach, which CMS is pioneering.

[Read more…]

« Previous Page

Opportunity Culture in the News: How to Transform Education

In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture

Opportunity Culture Principals Speak: “People Want to Be a Part of This”

5 Steps to Design Highly Paid Teacher Career Paths

State Leaders: Set These Policies to Enable an Opportunity Culture

Doing the Math on Opportunity Culture’s Early Impact

Opportunity Culture Schools: Showing N.C. How to Keep Teachers

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