Public Impact

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • What We Do
  • Media
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
Innovation. Excellence. Service. Impact.
  • Opportunity Culture
  • Teachers & Principals
    • Teacher Leadership
    • Recruit, Select, and Keep Education Talent
    • Competencies of High Performers
    • Evaluating Teacher and Leader Performance
    • Teacher and Leader Compensation
    • Professional Development for Educators
  • Turnarounds
    • Turnarounds Within Schools
    • Restarts by Charter Operators
    • Innovation Zones
  • Funding
    • School Funding
  • Charters
    • Charter School Authorizing
    • Scaling Up Quality
    • Restarts in Failing Schools
    • High Market Share Cities
    • State and Federal Charter School Policy
    • Help for Charter Schools
    • Serving Students with Highest Needs
  • More Topics
    • Big Ideas for Education
    • Entrepreneurship in K-12
    • Parents and Community
    • Philanthropy in Education
    • Special Populations
    • Technology in Schools
    • Assessment and Data

How to Radically Improve Teacher & Principal Preparation

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 21, 2016

How can new teachers and principals start their jobs prepared for educational excellence, and how can the schools that hire them know they’re ready to excel? In today’s preparation systems, no one is fully getting what they need—not aspiring teachers and principals, not schools, not students. There is a better way.

In Opportunity Culture schools, Multi-Classroom Leadership creates the potential for aspiring teachers to experience paid, full-time, yearlong residencies led by excellent teachers who lead instructional teams. Similarly, Multi-School Leadership, in which excellent principals lead two or more schools, creates the potential for paid, full-time residencies for aspiring principals—particularly ones who have already led instructional teams as multi-classroom leaders. New school models allow both teacher and principal residents to be paid for a year within existing budgets.

In a new brief from Public Impact, we show how to create such residencies. The teacher residencies are nothing like typical student teaching, in which schools—largely as a courtesy to teacher preparation programs—allow any teacher to supervise aspiring teachers on a part-time basis for a single semester, sometimes rotating among classrooms in unaccountable roles. Similarly, most new principals today lack substantial instructional leadership experience.

Instead, we envision a future in which every aspiring teacher and principal works as a paid, full-time, full-year resident coached by the nation’s best educators, while being screened for potential hiring.

[Read more…]

How to Lead a Schoolwide “Team of Leaders”: Tools for Principals

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 9, 2016

In the most successful Opportunity Culture schools, principals lead a team of multi-classroom leaders—strong teachers who lead small teams and are accountable for outcomes in each grade and/or subject—to ensure instructional excellence schoolwide. Successful principals say this schoolwide “team of leaders” approach is crucial to their students’ success and to providing teachers with deep support throughout the school.

A new set of tools from Public Impact can help other principals emulate their approach.

[Read more…]

Every School Can Have a Great Principal: A Fresh Vision for How

written by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan on April 22, 2016

This column first appeared on Education Next.

Great teachers matter—we all know that. But great principals matter nearly as much. We recently profiled three principals who achieved strong student learning growth in their schools in tough circumstances. Forming and leading a team of teacher-leaders proved crucial to all. But then what?

Can great principals take their leadership to the next level and stay connected to teachers and students? Could they reach all schools, not just the fraction they reach today?

We asked just that, and here’s our answer: yes.

In An Excellent Principal for Every School: Transforming Schools into Leadership Machines, we share our vision for how districts and charter networks can reach a lot more students and teachers—potentially all—with great principals, for much higher pay, within regular budgets.

You might recognize this concept, since we’ve floated—and implemented—similar ideas with teachers in Opportunity Culture schools in several states already (including unionized districts). We’ve now extended our thinking to principals.

[Read more…]

School Turnarounds: How Successful Principals Use Teacher Leadership

written by publicimpact on March 17, 2016

As the Opportunity Culture initiative was beginning, three principals signed on to lead low-performing, high-poverty schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Metropolitan Nashville districts. The odds were stacked against them and their students—one school, for example, has student transiency rates of 70 percent and higher.

But within a few short years, their schools all showed very high growth—one school was in the top 1 percent in North Carolina for growth, and the other two received the highest growth score possible in the Tennessee system, with one getting the highest level of growth in math in Nashville in grades three through eight.

At all three of these schools, the principals led a team of multi-classroom leaders (MCLs), excellent teachers who stay in the classroom and lead teaching teams. MCLs provide support through coaching, co-teaching, co-planning, and team collaboration, while taking accountability for the results of all students in the team.  In a new series of vignettes and an accompanying video from Public Impact, the principals tell what they did and how their roles as principal changed when they could rely on their MCL teams to spread great instruction throughout the schools.

[Read more…]

Hiring Turnaround Leaders Under ESSA–New Training

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on February 18, 2016

What makes school turnaround leaders special? State and district leaders can understand how to identify, select, and retain great leaders using the research-based competencies specific to successful turnaround leaders, with a new, free three-part professional learning module.

Developed through a partnership between the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, the Center on School Turnaround, Public Impact, and the University of Virginia Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education, these tools build on the strong cross-sector research base on competencies in the workplace and the school-turnaround-specific work of Public Impact, the University of Virginia, and others.

Under the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states must still identify their lowest-performing schools, but how to turn them around will largely be left up to state and district leaders. Selecting the right leaders is critical to turnaround success, making training such as this module ever more important.

[Read more…]

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!

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…]

Next Page »

Public Impact®

Public Impact, LLC
Chapel Hill, NC
919-240-7955

Public Impact encourages the free use, reproduction, and distribution of our materials, but we require attribution. If you adapt the materials, you must include on every page “Adapted from PublicImpact.com; Copyright Public Impact” in the font size specified here.

Materials may not be sold, leased, licensed, or otherwise distributed for compensation. See our Terms of Use page or contact us for more information.

Public Impact is certified as a living wage employer by Orange County Living Wage.

Search

Subscribe

Sign Up for E-News!
 


 
Read Back Issues of our
E-Newsletter

 
Subscribe to our blog with RSS

Follow

New from Public Impact

Learning in Real Time—How Charter Schools Served Students During Covid-19 Closures
Profiles highlight how charter schools were able to respond quickly to school closures during the pandemic and continue to serve their students well.

Building an Effective Staff—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Engaging Families—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Building a Strong School Culture—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

The Impact of School Restarts—Lessons from Four Indianapolis Schools
Report analyzes how enrollment, demographic, and student performance data changed following the restarts of four charter schools in Indianapolis, IN.

Learning from Project L.I.F.T.—Legacy of a Public-Private School Turnaround Initiative
Report examines successes, challenges, and lessons from a private-public district turnaround initiative.

The Potential of a Virtual Education—Lessons from Virtual Schools with Results 
Report highlights two virtual charter schools making online schooling work for their students and identifies lessons and recommendations for virtual schools.  

Public Impact, LLC | 919-240-7955 | Terms of Use | © Public Impact 2000-2020 | Wordpress website design by LeGa Design Group


Don’t miss the latest Public Impact reports:
Sign-up for our newsletter!



×