Public Impact announces with pleasure our fifth cohort of Opportunity Culture Fellows. This year’s 15 fellows are Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leaders and principals who have achieved strong results and been leaders in their schools and districts. Fellows provide support to their cohort, take one another’s ideas back to their schools, write columns about their experiences, and speak locally […]
Opportunity Culture News: New Opportunity Culture Site, Multi-Classroom Leaders Share Impact
Opportunity Culture schools and educators continue to attract attention…check out these posts from new sites, multi-classroom leader columns, and an exciting award for a multi-classroom leader. Lexington City Schools’ Superintendent on Working with Us to Implement Opportunity Culture (no longer available online): Dr. Anitra Wells, superintendent of Lexington City Schools, discusses the district’s plans to […]
Arkansas Opportunity Culture Pilot Adds 3 Districts and 8 North Little Rock Schools
Opportunity Culture continues to grow: After an initial year at North Little Rock Middle School, the Arkansas Department of Education has expanded its Opportunity Culture pilot to three more districts. The school districts of Forrest City, Lead Hill, and Lincoln are joining the Opportunity Culture initiative—to which the state committed in its Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) […]
Learning to Lead as a Multi-Classroom Leader
By Hadley Moore In 2015–16, I was a high school English teacher at an elite, private college-prep high school. In 2017-18, I became an assistant principal at an inner-city elementary school. How on earth did that happen? I loved being a high school English teacher. It was my dream job, molding and shaping young people’s […]
High-Growth Learning, 56K Students Reached: Opportunity Culture 2018–19
As student learning continues to benefit, teachers want to keep and grow Opportunity Culture: That’s just one of the many findings and stats to report from the 2018-19 update of the Opportunity Culture data dashboard. Public Impact, which created and leads the national Opportunity Culture initiative, updates the dashboard annually. Highlights from the dashboard include: […]
The Best Tool—Sometimes: Using Tech in Elementary School
By Amber Hines. This column first appeared on EducationNC. As soon as students enter my classroom for a small-group session, I know what question is coming: “Are we going to record?” Elementary school students love using technology. But teachers must use students’ valuable learning time wisely: Technology should be meaningful, data-driven, and help meet our […]
Bringing Indiana Teacher Pay, Prep Up to Snuff
How much does Indiana need to catch up to surrounding states on teacher pay? The short answer? $658.1 million—that’s the cost of bringing Indiana teacher pay to the regional median. In a thorough look at the teacher crisis in Indiana written by Public Impact’s Stephanie Dean, Stand for Children Indiana and Teach Plus make the […]
Reengaging Disconnected Youth: Early Lessons from Newark
New Jersey’s youth face enormous, long-standing challenges, many stemming from historic discrimination and endemic poverty. Nearly 4,000 youth between the ages of 16 and 20 are not in school, and about 3,000 more between 15 and 21 are at risk of leaving school without a high school diploma. Half of the city’s 16- to 19-year-olds, […]
Charter-Like Freedoms for District Schools: A New Path
Across the United States, school districts have a new option for their schools—“autonomous district schools”—that gives schools the freedoms of charter schools and districts a way to grow high-quality, innovative schools and diversify public school options at scale. Like charter schools, autonomous district schools are freed from innovation-inhibiting state and district policies, allowing talented educators […]
Big Ambitions: IDEA Public Schools Aims High for Growth + Quality
In 2000, IDEA Public Schools opened its first campus on the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, IDEA operates 79 schools serving 45,000 students in six regions, proving that it’s possible to grow rapidly while maintaining quality. And IDEA plans to keep its foot on the gas. It’s on track to enroll 100,000 students by 2022, and one […]
Three More N.C. Districts to Launch Opportunity Culture with New State Funding
In the latest round of funding for the state’s Advanced Teaching Roles pilot, the North Carolina State Board of Education awarded grants to three districts that will implement Opportunity Culture roles—Halifax County and Hertford County in eastern North Carolina and Lexington City Schools in Davidson County. These rural and small-town, high-poverty districts struggle with academic […]
College Board, NC School of Science & Math, Public Impact Join Forces for Rural Schools
Public Impact is excited to announce that our Opportunity Culture initiative is partnering with the College Board and the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) to reach rural school districts with excellent NCSSM teachers. In the first phase of this pilot, an excellent NCSSM teacher will become an Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leader for a […]