The Daily Reflector, January 28, 2019

A public-private educational partnership will augment mathematics instruction at North Pitt High School this semester as part of a project to partner remote expertise with teachers on site at schools statewide.

The College Board and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics are partnering with Chapel Hill-based Public Impact to reach rural North Carolina school districts with excellent NCSSM teachers, the partnership announced last week. The pilot project will focus on precalculus courses through June.

The effort will partner NCSSM teacher Maria Hernandez with North Pitt’s Sarah Donaldson as well as teachers at three other schools: Stanford Wickham at Vance County High School; Jocelyn Thammavong and Ashley Knox at New Bern High School; and Corrette Miller of Lexington Senior High School. Read the full article…

Rocky Mount Telegram, January 21, 2019, by Amelia Harper

As the Opportunity Culture teaching model expands to historic proportions in Edgecombe County Public Schools, the school district is hosting its first job fair for teacher leadership positions on Saturday.

The Opportunity Culture Teacher Leadership Job Fair will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday in the atrium of Martin Millennium Academy at 400 East Johnson Street in Tarboro.

“We have not had a job fair for Opportunity Culture yet, so we are really excited about it. We are inviting anybody who is interested in Opportunity Culture teacher leadership positions in Edgecombe County,” said Erin Swanson, director of innovation for Edgecombe County Public Schools. “We are looking for people inside or outside the district. We have already opened the application process so folks can get on the website, learn more about the positions, and apply.” Read the full article…

The Greensboro News & Record, January 14, 2019 by Jessie Pounds

After 10 years teaching English at Dudley High School, Ashley Ekwem-Thorpe had plenty of “Panther” pride, but also a desire for a new adventure.

So this school year she applied for a new position advertised at Hairston Middle School, a feeder school to Dudley.

As a multi-classroom leader working with nine English teachers, Ekwem-Thorpe is part of a new experiment for Guilford County Schools — one that rearranges some school staffing roles in an attempt to boost student achievement. Read the full article…

EdNC, January 2, 2019, by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel

As the founders of the Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of great teaching to many more students, we keep a tight focus on how students and teachers benefit from Opportunity Culture implementation in their schools. In North Carolina — the largest implementation state so far, with 80 schools this year — the latest student growth numbers give one great example.

In 2017–18, 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.

Opportunity Culture schools in the state were also far less likely to fall short of growth targets — 15 percent of schools versus 27 percent of non-Opportunity Culture schools. These results excluded any school where it was known that Opportunity Culture was not implemented in a tested grade or subject. Read the full article…

RTV6, December 17, 2018, by Lauren Casey

Teacher retention is an issue plaguing many schools in our state, even right here in Marion County. So the biggest district in the state is taking a new approach to retaining their star teachers by offering them a new chance for professional development.

If you ask any teacher, they likely didn’t go into education for the paycheck. It’s about the kids. But often times the only way to advance in your career as a teacher, other than tenure, is to move to an administrative role. But that is no longer the case at IPS.

The district created what is called the Opportunity Culture. It’s a chance for teachers to to advance in their careers while also staying where they are so desperately needed — in the classroom.

Rebekah Bennett is a part of this program at James Whitcomb Riley School #43 in Indianapolis. After being a teacher for 12 years, she eventually moved to a new role as a literary coach and now as a “Multi-Classroom Leader” in the Opportunity Culture. It’s a role she has enjoyed for the past two school years.

Principal Bakari Posey says that many teachers want an opportunity for a bigger leadership role, but their passion is still with the kids in the classroom, not in the politics of the administration. He works one-on-one with his MCLs as they are called to check in on the teachers they serve and plan for better success in the classroom.

“The point of it is to get high quality teachers in front of more kids,” Posey said.

Part of the benefit to the opportunity culture is to retain the district’s star teachers. It also puts more teachers in front of kids because the MCLs will go into classroom and work with kids in smaller groups on various topics.

Whether the teacher wants to make more money for his or her family, to take on a new leadership role, or to impact more kids — the Opportunity Culture allows that wiggle room in education.

Bennett says it has been a great chance for her as an educator to have an even greater impact on the school and students.

“It’s been wonderful for me to be able to still have my hand on kids but yet still be able to effect more kids in other classrooms by working with their teachers,” Bennett said. “But I think the biggest part of that is being able to touch more kids.”

There’s an additional stipend that is directly tied to how the teachers and those students perform on tests. That stipend provides extra incentives to the MCLs as they work with their assigned teachers and classrooms.

Originally posted on RTV6.

Getting Smart, November 30, 2018

Leading a public school district is difficult and complicated work. But done well, there is no other job that can change how a community thinks about itself, its children and its future. The following are 15 districts that are changing the trajectory of both education and their communities by working on personalized and competency-based learning. They are making career preparation—including communications, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration–a priority. They are big and small, urban and rural, east and west, and as such are representative of the American education challenge. Read the full article…

The Hechinger Report, November 29, 2018, by Tara García-Mathewson

Edgecombe County Public Schools in rural North Carolina has long had trouble filling all of its open teaching positions. Historically, there just hasn’t been enough interest among qualified candidates. But that’s changing.

Edgecombe is still a rural district with a high-poverty student body, but a new staffing model has made its schools newly desirable for teachers who want to be school leaders without leaving the classroom. The model stems from an idea laid out in a paper almost a decade ago by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel, co-presidents of Public Impact, an education advocacy organization. That idea is simple: Students chalk up three times the learning gains in classrooms with the most effective teachers (those in the top quintile), so if it’s not possible to hire only the most effective teachers, why not expand those teachers’ reach?

The first schools to implement what Public Impact calls an “Opportunity Culture,” did so during the 2013-14 school year, and Edgecombe County Public Schools is set to become the first district to bring the model systemwide. So far, eight of its 13 traditional schools have hired teacher-leaders who not only put their great teaching to use in front of students, but also coach their colleagues to spread their best practices. Next year, the remaining five schools will do the same. In each school, teacher-leaders get paid more to compensate them for taking on the extra work and responsibility of their expanded roles.

Erin Swanson, the district’s director of innovation, said administrators latched onto the model as both a recruitment tool and a way to retain good teachers who might otherwise be tempted to leave Edgecombe County Public Schools for more money elsewhere or school leadership positions outside of teaching. They’d also had a hard time supporting the many early-career teachers who dominate their staffing pool and saw Opportunity Culture as a way to do that better.

While the eight schools using this model have historically started the year with two to four empty teaching positions, Swanson said this year they had none, which she attributes to Opportunity Culture. And beyond the staffing solution, Swanson said the new model has led to profound collaboration among teachers and created a sense of momentum for other school improvement efforts.

“It really opens up a door for more innovation,” Swanson said.

Each school that embarks on creating an Opportunity Culture does so in a unique way, based on its needs. One of Edgecombe’s elementary schools created three teacher-leader positions to focus on improving literacy among students in third grade and younger. A middle school recognized its area of need was in high-quality math instruction, so it hired a teacher-leader to work in that subject. Another elementary school has a teacher-leader supporting English language arts teachers in grades three through five, as well as one focused on supporting both special and general education teachers to improve services for students with special needs.

Schools also pay for the teacher-leaders differently. Public Impact encourages sustainability, asking schools to fit the extra pay for teacher-leaders into their core budgets, rather than turning to grant money, for example. Some schools hire fewer teachers overall, increasing the number of students each teacher-leader works with by having paraprofessionals help out in their classrooms. Some pull money from other parts of their school budgets to cover the supplemental salary.

Making all these decisions takes time. That’s why Edgecombe County Public Schools rolled out the model districtwide over the course of three years. Already, though, the district is seeing results from its early adopters on standardized test scores. Based on state expectations for student growth, a middle and elementary school went from underperforming during the 2016-17 school year to meeting growth expectations last year, according to Swanson. North Edgecombe High School has exceeded growth expectations two years in a row and entered the top 20 percent of schools in the state on that measure. All three schools that started using the model last year met or exceeded growth expectations.

These are major accomplishments in Edgecombe County. Swanson said that Opportunity Culture could be transformational.

“We know that in order to really do things differently,” she said, “to reimagine what education looks like for our kids, we have got to have the most amazing people at every level.”

About 250 schools nationwide are either designing an Opportunity Culture or have already created one, according to Public Impact. That means approximately 1,600 teachers and 50,000 students are teaching and learning under this model, the group says.

Educators have been particularly enthusiastic about the extra coaching and support from the teacher-leaders, according to Sharon Barrett, vice president of communications for Public Impact. Teachers essentially get real-time professional development targeted to the exact areas in which they need to improve. And while they are opening themselves up to critiques, it’s not by the people who conduct their formal observations (which have consequences for their pay and job security).

“There’s a feeling of ‘we’re all on the same team,’ and people feel more open to having their challenges exposed because they know they’re going to get the support,” Barrett said.

Originally posted on The Hechinger Report.