In two reports Public Impact has worked on, we look at charter schools’ effects, from a close-up of one school in Nashville to an entire district in New Orleans. We consider the 10 years of charters since Hurricane Katrina in Ten Years in New Orleans: Public School Resurgence and the Path Ahead, and the gradual conversion option in Expanding District Capacity to Turn Around Failing Schools: An Evaluation of the Cameron Middle School Charter Conversion.
4 Great Examples of Teacher Voice: Opportunity Culture Columns
What is it actually like to be a teacher-leader in an Opportunity Culture school? You can read the Opportunity Culture website to understand how an “OC” school works, and you can watch videos of teachers and administrators talking about why they love their jobs, what their roles are like, and other aspects of creating an Opportunity Culture.
For more in-depth looks at various aspects of an Opportunity Culture, though, don’t miss the ongoing series of columns written by OC teacher-leaders appearing in the middle of each month on Real Clear Education. To recap so far:
Kristin Cubbage, a multi-classroom leader (MCL) in Charlotte, kicked off the series with “An Opportunity for Change,” explaining her role as the leader of a teaching team, why she loves it, and calling on education leaders to “open the door” to the opportunities she sees in her school.
Joe Ashby, who was a multi-classroom leader in Nashville, writes about how the MCL model creates a teaching team that allows him to give and receive satisfying, useful professional development every day.
Bobby Miles, a multi-classroom leader in Charlotte, turns to the subject of accountability: MCLs extend their reach to more students by leading their team and continuing to teach students directly, for higher pay–and take accountability for the results of all the students in their team. For Mr. Miles, that means he’s accountable for the results of 421 students–and he loves it. “Far from being scary, it motivates me,” he writes.
And in the latest column, MCL Karen von Klahr, who teaches in Cabarrus County, N.C., writes about “riding the roller coaster together”–providing real support to a brand-new teacher. Watch the accompanying video of Ms. von Klahr and her new teacher discuss the joy they found working together.
If you need an overview of an Opportunity Culture, read an introductory column by Public Impact’s co-directors, Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel.
As the series grows, you can find all the columns here; future posts will include issues of teacher pay, data-driven instruction, blended learning, elementary school teachers specializing in one or two subjects, an Opportunity Culture in a unionized district, and in schools that are not high-poverty.
Opportunity Culture Outcomes: The First Two Years
This post first appeared in Education Next.
Maybe it’s because we’re turning 50 in the coming year and have together been pondering the plight of the poor and their lost human potential since we were 20. But we’re weary of hearing education reformers pretend that just changing policies and management systems—name your favorite—will put an excellent teacher in every classroom. Even though most of us have spilled voluminous ink on those topics.
What if, instead, change started where excellence already lives—in the classrooms and minds of excellent teachers? That is, those teachers who achieve large student learning gains and leaps in higher-order thinking, and who inspire and motivate students and colleagues alike.
What if all it took to launch were a handful of willing superintendents and some committed principals? Ones willing to empower those excellent teachers: to reach far more students, lead and develop teams of colleagues on-the-job, and help their principals lead their schools, for substantially more pay?
What if all “systems” changes were geared to make that possible, at large scale?
From that line of thinking was born Opportunity Culture, an initiative to try this idea: Let school teams with teachers on them redesign jobs and use age-appropriate technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within regular budgets, adding more planning time, and having them take full accountability for the learning of all the students they serve.
Seven schools in two states began implementing these new school models in 2013–14. More than 30 schools in three states implemented last year, and more than 60 schools in five states will be implementing or designing their school models in 2015–16.
The Public Impact team facilitated school decision-making, along with Education First and Education Resource Strategies, and we produced many free materials to help. But the teachers and principals get all the credit for their outcomes. We’ve gathered data on their early results from the first two years, and we report all the data for which comparison groups were possible.
These outcomes are promising for students and teachers, but there is room to improve the support—and, yes, the systems and policies—that affect teachers in these new roles and their principals.
How to Build an Opportunity Culture: New, Free Toolkit
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.
What Makes an Opportunity Culture Different?
When Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative, we were clear on the goal: reach as many students as possible with excellent teaching. As our team worked with teachers and principals, we committed to a second goal: provide outstanding, lasting, well-paid career opportunities to educators.
As researchers, we saw many pay and career path programs fall short of those goals–and still see too many today. Too often, pay programs fail to provide opportunities for teachers to learn from outstanding peers and others at work–to collaborate, plan with, and support one another. Too many new roles are funded with temporary or politically tenuous money. And very few pay or career path programs increase the number of students who have excellent teachers formally responsible for their learning.
So we embodied our goals and the guidance to achieve them in the five Opportunity Culture Principles. Those principles set Opportunity Culture schools apart from the other efforts.
What Could You Do in an Opportunity Culture?
“The best of both worlds.”
“There’s no other job like this.”
“This is one of the greatest opportunities teachers have to increase their salary, as well as increasing their skill set, their strategies, and their leadership abilities. I think it’s an amazing opportunity that you just cannot get anywhere else.”
“I think kids are thriving in the environment. I think it’s really powerful.”
“As a professional, this has been the most feedback and constructive criticism in creating this teacher that I’ve always aspired to be, and now I have the support to do it.”
What could you do in an Opportunity Culture? For the teachers in the latest Opportunity Culture video, the possibilities seem far greater than in their former one-teacher-one-classroom roles. As they note, an Opportunity Culture gives them the chance to earn more, learn more, reach more students, and support and lead other teachers.
Nashville Student Teachers Earn, Learn, Support Teacher-Leaders
Better-prepared new teachers, more adults in every classroom, more small-group instruction, more adults caring for every student—how can a school wrap all that up in one package? Three Metropolitan Nashville Opportunity Culture schools are trying a novel approach with paid, yearlong student teaching positions. In a new case study, Public Impact examines this “aspiring teachers” program and its early implementation.
In 2013–14, the two elementary schools and a middle school, part of Nashville’s Innovation Zone created to help high-need, low-performing schools, combined the aspiring teachers program with the Opportunity Culture Multi-Classroom Leadership model. Multi-Classroom Leadership extends the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. A multi-classroom leader, or MCL, leads a team of teachers while continuing to teach, helping the team teachers develop and excel through extensive co-planning, co-teaching, and feedback on the job. MCLs take accountability for the learning of all students in their “pods,” and delegate responsibilities to teachers and paraprofessionals that make the best use of everyone’s time.
