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Three More N.C. Districts to Launch Opportunity Culture with New State Funding

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on January 31, 2019

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 success and attracting and retaining teachers. They will use Opportunity Culture roles, which have produced outstanding student growth elsewhere, to provide intensive support to all teachers, paid career advancement and a stronger teacher pipeline.

The national Opportunity Culture initiative, founded by Public Impact, extends the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within schools’ recurring budgets. The Advanced Teaching Roles pilot, begun in 2016, was intended to improve student learning outcomes by allowing excellent teachers to reach more students by leading a teaching team and taking accountability for all of the team’s students, and receive salary supplements for these advanced teaching roles, with models that can be replicated statewide.

Halifax and Lexington City will design their Opportunity Culture plans this spring for implementation in fall; Hertford County Schools will spend the next year planning for implementation in fall 2020. Public Impact will assist these districts in planning and early implementation.

Multi-Classroom Leadership is the foundation of an Opportunity Culture. Each school’s design and implementation team, which includes teachers, uses Multi-Classroom Leadership and other roles to reach more students with high-standards, personalized instruction—one hallmark of great teachers.

Multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) lead a small teaching team, providing instructional guidance and frequent, on-the-job development, while continuing to teach part of the time. The schools redesign schedules to provide additional school-day time for teacher planning, coaching and collaboration. MCLs typically lead the introduction of more effective curricula, instructional methods, classroom management and schoolwide culture-building.

Accountable for the results of all students in the team, multi-classroom leaders earn supplements averaging 20 percent (and up to 50 percent) of teacher pay, within the regular school budget. The school design teams reallocate school budgets to fund pay supplements permanently, in contrast to temporarily grant-funded programs. Funding from the Advanced Roles pilot will not be used for pay supplements, but for planning and implementing Opportunity Culture and associated professional development.

In the 2017–18 school year, Opportunity Culture schools in North Carolina—the largest implementation state so far, with about 80 schools—outpaced the state results in student growth. While only 27 percent of non-Opportunity Culture schools in North Carolina exceeded student learning growth targets, nearly double that—53 percent—of Opportunity Culture schools exceeded growth.

In early 2018, researchers at the Brookings Institution and American Institutes for Research released a study showing the effect Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leaders 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 from the 66th to 72nd percentile in reading in six of seven statistical models. Nearly three-fourths of the schools in the AIR-Brookings study were Title I; nearly all of the schools in Halifax, Hertford and Lexington City are Title I.

Founded and led by Public Impact, which is based in the Chapel Hill, N.C., area, Opportunity Culture now includes more than 25 districts in nine states (not all are yet publicly announced).

“We are thrilled that these three districts will receive support from the state to make a proven, major difference for their teachers and students,” said Stephanie Dean, vice president of strategic policy advising at Public Impact. “We look forward to helping their educators design an Opportunity Culture model that fits each school’s context and needs.”

Halifax County Schools (HCS), led by Superintendent Eric Cunningham, has 10 schools and 178 teachers. They serve about 2,560 students, of whom about 84 percent are black, 6 percent American Indian, 4 percent white and 4 percent Hispanic. One hundred percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The district suffers from a teacher turnover rate of 29 percent and academically struggling students.”We are grateful to be awarded the grant to partner with Public Impact in the Opportunity Culture model,” Cunningham said. “This grant will allow our district to develop a strategic and sustainable model to compensate teachers who work above and beyond to meet the needs of our students. The mission of HCS is to create a positive and supportive learning environment. This partnership is a big step in building teacher capacity—a critical component to raising student achievement. Halifax County Schools is well on the way of becoming a lighthouse school district for all students.”

Hertford County Public Schools, led by Superintendent William T. Wright, Jr., has seven schools and 190 teachers.
They serve about 2,900 students, of whom about 79 percent are black, 4 percent Hispanic, and 13 percent white, with about 98 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The district is focused on creating its own educator pipeline given its annual teacher turnover rate of 20 percent and a three-year average rate for administrator turnover of 19 percent.”Hertford County Public Schools is honored to be chosen as a recipient of funding to support the state’s Advanced Teaching Roles pilot,” Wright said. “The Opportunity Culture initiative is directly aligned with our district’s strategic goals in the areas of operational efficiency, teaching and learning, and talent acquisition and development.  Hertford County Public Schools, working in conjunction with Public Impact, is impacting lives positively by increasing student learning through the development of excellent teachers, in keeping with our district’s motto by being ‘All In for Learning’.”

Lexington City Schools, led by Superintendent Anitra Wells, has seven schools and 181 teachers. They serve 3,200 students, of whom about 30 percent are black, 35 percent Hispanic, and 22 percent white, with about 93 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Its teacher turnover rates are as high as 36 percent (middle schools); it competes for teachers with Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro—three of the state’s largest districts—all of which are able to offer higher salary supplements and a broader range of teacher and leadership opportunities.“We are extremely excited and humbled to have been selected for this grant opportunity,” Wells said. “This grant will enable us to utilize our most effective teachers to help support other teachers as we focus on growing every child, every day, in every classroom.  Our students deserve the best, and this model will ensure that they each get exposure to the best instructional strategies and staff available.  We, in Lexington, have challenged ourselves to meet every child where they are and support them in reaching their maximum potential. This model helps us in staying true to that goal.”

In the first phase of the Advanced Roles pilot, the school districts of Vance County, Edgecombe County, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, all of which use Opportunity Culture, were three of the first six districts selected. In addition, Guilford County Schools and Cabarrus County Schools have introduced Opportunity Culture schools.

College Board, NC School of Science & Math, Public Impact Join Forces for Rural Schools

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on January 17, 2019

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 team of pre-calculus teachers spread across rural North Carolina in the spring 2019 semester. The first phase will lay the groundwork to add more remotely located multi-classroom leaders from NCSSM and elsewhere.

[Read more…]

In the News: Opportunity Culture in Indianapolis, NC districts

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on February 17, 2017

Indianapolis is experimenting with a new kind of teacher — and it’s transforming this school: At School 107 in Indianapolis, Principal Jeremy Baugh said, “We needed to find a way to support new teachers to be highly effective right away.” Chalkbeat covers how Baugh and his staff began using Multi-Classroom Leadership this year to help their students. Historically a low-performing school, with high student and teacher turnover and a high number of English language learners, School 107 has already been able to keep one strong teacher in the classroom as an MCL instead of moving into administration, and with its team of MCLs could face an unexpected influx of 181 students who joined the school over the past few months. Read the full story here.

‘Opportunity Culture’ initiative coming to Vance County schools: Vance County Schools has become the fourth North Carolina district to participate in the national Opportunity Culture Initiative, reported The Daily Dispatch, with three elementary schools being the district’s first to implement their new teaching roles and school plans in the 2017-18 school year. Vance will be using multi-classroom leaders and expanded-impact teachers. Read the full story here.

Teacher leadership roles come to Edgecombe County: At Edgecombe County Public Schools, the first three of the district’s schools to embark on Opportunity Culture roles form a feeder pattern from elementary through high school, where, says Public Impact’s Shonaka Ellison,”we’re losing some really excellent teaching in schools.” As Liz Bell reports in EducationNC, Ellison is working closely with Edgecombe County administrators and teachers at the three schools to to plan new teaching roles and career paths aimed at recruiting and retaining great teachers. She led some of them on visits to Opportunity Culture schools in Charlotte, which also has challenges retaining teachers in high-needs schools–but Edgecombe, she notes, has the added challenge of being a rural district. “For a place like Edgecombe County, that’s really rural, having this type of career opportunity for teachers will help draw more teachers to the district,” she said. Read the full story here.

For more recent stories on Edgecombe, see December 2016 and January 2017 articles in The Rocky Mount Telegram: Edgecombe schools seek opportunities* and Edgecombe school district pursues new teacher recruitment plan.*

Scheduled for Success: Frank Zaremba of Barnette Elementary in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools writes: “When I became a multi-classroom leader for the exceptional children’s (EC’s) team, I expected to be able to use my 15 years of experience as an EC teacher and dean of students to coach teachers, especially special education teachers, and help them grow. But I quickly discovered that the people who needed support the most were the general classroom teachers who needed to know how to work with students with disabilities when an EC teacher couldn’t be in the room at the same time. What was the key to getting everyone on the same page and making terrific progress? Scheduling.” Read his inspiring column on what they did, and the impact on students, here in Real Clear Education.

*Articles are no longer available online.

Texas Launches Statewide Opportunity Culture Initiative

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on May 19, 2015

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has made Texas the first state to support multiple districts in creating anb Opportunity Culture, joining the national initiative designed to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets.

The Big Spring Independent School District, an eight-campus district in a town of about 28,000 people in west Texas, is recruiting for its first year of implementation in the 2015–16 school year, and the TEA is identifying additional districts to support in this work.

Big Spring is leading the way for small cities and towns in Texas and across the country to adopt Opportunity Culture models. These models use job redesign and age-appropriate technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget.

Opportunity Culture teachers typically work in collaborative teams led by excellent teachers. Teams have in-school planning and collaboration time together and are formally accountable for all of the students they reach. Teachers in Opportunity Culture districts in Tennessee, North Carolina, and New York are earning pay supplements as high as 50 percent of their state’s average teacher pay.

”Texas is committed to providing pathways for advancement and recognition for our best teachers,” said Texas Commissioner of Education Michael Williams. “Through our support of Opportunity Culture at the state level, our goal is to quantify success in districts by working collaboratively with teachers and principals to support greater student achievement for all students.”

[Read more…]

Put Technology to Work in Rural Schools

written by Bryan and Stephanie Dean on March 30, 2015

Technology makes it possible for each of us to do more, learn more and be more connected.

Need to pay your bills and register your kid for swim lessons while locating a recipe for dinner? Jump online. Want to learn more about something you just overheard while in line at the grocery store? Type it into a search engine. Wonder what your former Little League teammates are up to? Check your Facebook newsfeed.

Imagine what we could do for education if we maximized the potential of technology for teachers and students. Technology’s potential seems particularly compelling for rural schools, which struggle to offer an array of learning opportunities, to transport students to a central facility and to get the best combination of teachers from small candidate pools.

Technology in education sounds terrific: It can bring the world to a classroom. It can give students access to courses and resources they might not otherwise get. It can inject engaging fun into the classroom, as students learn through games and create in a digital medium.

[Read more…]

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