Public Impact

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Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture in the News

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What’s new with Opportunity Culture? Recent news coverage highlights the growth and successes of Opportunity Culture, an initiative of Public Impact:

Jessica Smith (left) leads a teaching team as a multi-classroom leader in Indianapolis Public Schools.

Guilford school board wants flexibility to help 9 low-performing schools: Jessie Pounds of the News & Record reported on the expansion of Opportunity Culture into nine schools in Greensboro, N.C., with the district planning for more. “I am really grateful that we have taken a very significant step in hopefully providing much needed support and resources,” said Guilford County Schools board member Byron Gladden.

How long should teachers work before receiving tenure? In a discussion of tenure in California, Education Dive reporter Amelia Harper notes the need to develop teachers as leaders: “Administrators can use professional development to develop teacher leaders or can work with organizations, such as Public Impact to implement models in which teachers oversee and support teachers in multiple classrooms. By doing so, they can help make more of their teachers tenure-worthy, whether they receive tenure in their state or not.”

3 Vance schools set to launch Opportunity Culture initiatives: Miles Bates of the Henderson (N.C.) Daily Dispatch reports on the expansion of Opportunity Culture schools in the Vance County Schools District. “It will provide us with the opportunity to expose excellence in teaching to all of our children and will be great support for our teachers,” said Principal Marylaura McKoon. “It really is a win-win situation. It will do good things for our school.”

Teachers kept quitting this Indianapolis school. Here’s how the principal got them to stay: Chalkbeat reporter Dylan Peers McCoy reported on the exciting news that after years of high turnover, Opportunity Culture was making a difference in teacher retention at Lew Wallace Elementary. When he surveyed his students this year, Principal Jeremy Baugh said, 97 percent said they planned to return next year. Read about what the team teachers and multi-classroom leaders say about the support they received. “I can’t even imagine doing it without Jessica,” first-year teacher Abby Campbell said about her multi-classroom leader, Jessica Smith. “I would’ve been a hot mess.” Education Dive noted the results as well.

Guilford County Becomes N.C.’s 5th Opportunity Culture District

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Under Superintendent Sharon Contreras, Guilford County Schools, based in Greensboro, N.C., has joined the national Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within schools’ recurring budgets.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution and American Institutes for Research released a study in January showing the effect Opportunity Culture can have: Teachers who were on average at the 50th percentile in student learning gains, and who then joined teams led by multi-classroom leaders, produced learning gains equivalent to those of teachers from the 75th to 85th percentile in math, and, in six of the seven statistical models, from 66th to 72nd percentile in reading.

Opportunity Culture, founded and led by Public Impact of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, N.C., now includes more than 20 districts in nine states, including five in North Carolina. Guilford will be the second of North Carolina’s five largest districts to join. See the Opportunity Culture Dashboard for more details about the initiative, which has grown to more than 225 schools since implementation began in seven schools in 2013.

Contreras was also the superintendent in Syracuse, N.Y., when she took the unprecedented step of becoming the first collective bargaining Opportunity Culture district in 2014–15, only the third district in the initiative’s pilot phase.

[Read more…]

Brookings-AIR Study Finds Large Academic Gains in Opportunity Culture

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Students in classrooms of team teachers led by “multi-classroom leaders” showed sizeable academic gains, according to a new study from the American Institutes for Research and the Brookings Institution.

Students respond to a multi-classroom leader’s question in a classroom in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

The team teachers were, on average, at the 50th percentile in the student learning gains they produced before joining a team led by a multi-classroom leader. After joining the teams, they produced learning gains equivalent to those of teachers in the top quartile in math and nearly that in reading, said the report, released on January 11, 2018, through the CALDER Center.

The gains the study attributes to team teachers are equivalent to those of teachers from the 75th to 85th percentile in math, and, in six of the seven statistical models, from 66th to 72nd percentile in reading.

These results show that students can consistently experience top-quartile teaching in math, and teaching nearly that good in reading, if schools place excellent teachers in charge of small teams of typical teachers.

[Read more…]

Beyoncé and Teacher Pay: TEDx Talk Tells All!

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What does Beyoncé have to do with great teachers? Ranson IB Middle School Principal Erica Jordan-Thomas wants you to know:

“There are Beyoncé educators in every single school building dropping number 1 albums year after year in the form of mind-blowing results with their kids.”

But, Jordan-Thomas says in her just-posted Fall 2017 TEDx talk, those Beyoncé educators are being held back by the traditional one-teacher, one-classroom setup in most schools. And there just aren’t enough Beyoncé educators to fill every U.S. classroom.

[Read more…]

Opportunity Culture Voices: From Action Plan to Teacher of the Year — in One Year

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This column is by Stacie Bunn and was published on EdNC.org, November 9, 2017

Editor’s Note: Stacie Bunn is an Opportunity Culture Fellow. Learn more about the Opportunity Culture initiative here.

In 2012, after 15 years of classroom experience and a year as an instructional coach, I became the multi-classroom leader (MCL) for science at Thomasboro Academy in Charlotte, N.C. I led a team of eight new and veteran teachers, co-teaching, coaching, modeling, co-planning, and leading student data analysis, while taking accountability for the science learning results of the team’s 300 students. Kenyatta Davenport was a second year teacher on my team.

After high school, Davenport worked at an after-school program, and later as a school teacher assistant and technology associate. With encouragement from colleagues, she got both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education.

In 2011, she began teaching at Thomasboro and now is an expanded-impact teacher, chosen because of her excellent student results to reach twice the number of students as a regular classroom teacher, with support from an extra teaching assistant. She was named her school’s Teacher of the Year in 2015.

But that came after a rough start.

[Read more…]

Opportunity Culture + Summit Learning: North Little Rock Pilots Statewide Plan

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To kick off a statewide Arkansas initiative to reach all students with excellent teaching, North Little Rock Middle School will begin creating an Opportunity Culture for teachers and students this fall, using teams led by multi-classroom leaders—experienced, excellent teachers who are paid more to lead a team, and are held accountable for student outcomes, teacher support, and team success.

Additionally, the North Little Rock district will use the Summit Learning Platform to personalize student learning. Summit Public Schools, located in California, created the platform to help students set and track goals at their own pace.

[Read more…]

Opportunity Culture Voices: When Students Own Their Academic Results, They Transform Their Schools

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When you’re not sure where to start, ask your students! Well, not always, but when I came to Charlotte, North Carolina’s James Martin Middle School as a multi-classroom leader in 2014, I felt overwhelmed.

I started as the MCL for sixth grade, where for the previous three years the students had been experiencing negative learning growth — falling further and further behind. By my second year, my teaching team’s students exceeded the state’s expected growth targets in literacy and achieved double-digit growth in overall proficiency.

How did we accomplish this? We began by surveying our students about their interests, trying to learn what motivates them and how to better serve their needs.

[Read more…]

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