This post by Whitaker Brown, an eighth-grade science teacher at Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, N.C., first appeared on the Project L.I.F.T. website. See here to learn how to apply in February for Opportunity Culture positions in the Project L.I.F.T. zone of schools. Long nights. Physically and emotionally draining days. Moments feeling that I […]
The Importance of Having an MCL
This post by Nicole Hardy, a kindergarten teacher at Ashley Park Pre-K–8 Elementary School in Charlotte, N.C., first appeared on the Project L.I.F.T. website. See here to learn how to apply in February for Opportunity Culture positions in the Project L.I.F.T. zone of schools. This is my first year in Project L.I.F.T., and my first […]
New Models Combine Teacher Leadership, Digital Learning
Teachers using blended learning need guidance to help students achieve high-growth learning consistently. Teacher-leaders and their teams need time to collaborate and learn together on the job. Students need access to personalized instruction that catalyzes consistently high growth and expands their thinking. How can schools achieve all of these goals? Combine blended learning with teacher […]
New Models Combine Teacher Leadership, Digital Learning
Teachers using blended learning need guidance to help students achieve high-growth learning consistently. Teacher-leaders and their teams need time to collaborate and learn together on the job. Students need access to personalized instruction that catalyzes consistently high growth and expands their thinking. How can schools achieve all of these goals? Combine blended learning with teacher […]
Opportunity Culture Voices: Mixing Team Leadership, Specialization
“ ‘One-teacher-one-classroom’ is a phrase you hear a lot in education these days: For the past 11 years, that described me. I taught on my own in self-contained third- and fifth-grade classrooms, and I loved my job. But I had enough leadership opportunities, such as mentoring, working with student teachers, and leading professional development, to […]
“Every Great Teacher Needs a Coach as Well”
Last week, Multi-Classroom Leader Bobby Miles spoke at the Teach Strong launch, part of a panel moderated by Amanda Ripley, author of the New York Times bestseller The Smartest Kids in the World, and including former Rep. George Miller of California, senior education advisor at Cengage Learning; Mary Cathryn Ricker, executive vice president of the […]
Launching Paid Teacher Leadership with Union-District Partnership
How could a large number of well-paid teacher-leader roles emerge in a unionized district? This question is at the top of the list for many superintendents.
Syracuse, N.Y., educators have some advice, captured in a new three-page vignette, How One Union-District Partnership Launched an Opportunity Culture. Syracuse union and district leaders discuss their experiences and lessons they learned about working together for a successful launch.
In late 2013, the Syracuse City School District became the nation’s first unionized district to use Opportunity Culture, with four of its highest-need schools choosing and tailoring models to fit. They began to implement their new teacher-leader roles using the Multi-Classroom Leadership model in 2014–15, and are now expanding the roles to many more schools. Multi-classroom leaders—several per school—earn a $12,000 supplement in Syracuse for leading teams and helping their colleagues succeed, while continuing to teach.
Opportunity Culture models extend the reach of teachers who excel with students to more students, directly and by leading other teachers, for much higher pay funded by reallocating existing budgets. Teachers gain planning and collaboration time, and teachers in advanced roles are responsible for the outcomes of all the students they serve—as well as for the support, development, and success of their colleagues when they work in teams. In nearly all cases, instructional group sizes remain the same or even smaller.
The strongest advice from Syracuse on launching an Opportunity Culture? Both union leaders and a former administrator say: Get the union involved from the very beginning, and keep it involved at every step of the way.
The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles
District leaders love the thought of “teacher leadership” that might attract and retain teachers—especially great ones—and close student learning gaps at a time of rising teacher vacancies. But too often, teacher-leader roles fail to produce the full impact district leaders intend. They rarely dramatically improve student learning or teacher effectiveness. What are the usual pitfalls? […]
Opportunity Culture Voices: Keep on Keeping on
“I’m practically a Syracuse City Schools lifetime member—from student, to teacher, to coach, then nearly into administration—but with a happy detour. I got to return to the classroom in a new position of multi-classroom leader. As the MCL, I lead a team of teachers while continuing to teach—the sweet spot for this point in my career.
But at a school new to me, in a new leadership role, with teachers who didn’t necessarily sign up for the total collaboration and openness of this team-teaching model, I faced challenges. I knew we needed to focus on data—we did need data to “drive our instruction”—and that meant sharing our students’ results with the whole team.”
–Syracuse City Schools Multi-Classroom Leader Maggie Vadala, in Keep on Keeping On: Using Data to Move Students Forward
Data-driven instruction + a new model of teacher-led team teaching + being at a new, high-need school + data systems that must continue to improve: That’s what Syracuse’s Maggie Vadala took on last year–and very happily. In Thursday’s RealClearEducation.com, Vadala describes the challenges.
“As I dug into the data, I realized I left one important item out: relationships! I was working with five third-grade teachers and 75 students. Altogether, the five teachers had just 11 years of teaching experience.
So while we were sharing our students’ sometimes dismal data, a far-from-comfortable experience for teachers used to working alone, I had to simultaneously build trust. They were welcoming but suspicious about my role—was I just there to run to the principal whenever they made a mistake? Where was I going with all that data? I had a group of committed people; now, they had to trust that I could guide us to accomplish more together than independently.”
Read how she did it, in her warm but no-nonsense, straightfoward approach to leading her team, and their ups and downs along the way. And hear more of Vadala’s thoughts on the accompanying video drawn from our September interview with her. She’s just one of the many inspiring Opportunity Culture teachers and teacher-leaders who sees the difference Opportunity Culture is making in schools. Read past columns from her Opportunity Culture colleagues in the Opportunity Culture series–and thanks to Real Clear Education as always for hosting it.
Creating a Statewide Turnaround District: Lessons from Tennessee
When Louisiana and Tennessee wanted to focus on their lowest-performing schools, they created statewide turnaround districts, which pull individual schools under state control. As detailed in The Achievement School District: Lessons from Tennessee, written by Public Impact for New Schools for New Orleans, Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD), though modeled on Louisiana’s Recovery School District, has forged its own path and offers useful insights for other states.
After Hurricane Katrina, most New Orleans schools entered the Recovery School District en masse. But the ASD has taken a more staged approach in Memphis, which has the state’s highest concentration of low-performing schools. And while New Orleans uses an all-choice, charter school enrollment system, the ASD strategy preserves the traditional public school model of community-based, neighborhood schools.
The Achievement School District: Lessons from Tennessee looks at the ASD’s strategies and implementation in Memphis in six areas:
- Public school governance. Collaboration coupled with competition has resulted in positive student outcomes for ASD schools and district-run turnaround schools in the Memphis Innovation Zone (iZone). Shelby County Schools, which encompasses Memphis, has become an urban school district where nearly one-third of schools operate autonomously from the traditional district governance model.
- Schools and operators. The ASD focused on ensuring high-quality school options for all students, using neighborhood-based enrollment—betting that autonomous schools will drive school improvement faster than traditional district efforts and show that charters can succeed with zoned enrollment. The ASD uses a diverse portfolio of local and national charter school operators within neighborhood-based school feeder patterns.
- Educator talent. The ASD has worked to increase the retention of its most effective teachers and leaders in its Achievement Schools, which it runs directly, and to recruit local leaders and operators for its charter schools. But a growing market of charter, ASD, and iZone schools is taxing the talent supply. The ASD is partnering with Shelby County Schools and local funders to develop a citywide strategy for recruiting, training, and retaining effective teachers and leaders to ensure a long-term, sustainable talent pipeline.
- Funding education reform. Aligned support between local and national funders has enhanced the ASD’s ability to carry out its work. The ASD has benefitted from partnerships between the state education agency and philanthropy to recruit charter operators and develop a sustainable talent pipeline.
- Equitable access to quality schools. The ASD relies on its increasingly diverse portfolio of neighborhood schools to ensure that all students, especially those with special needs, have equal access to high-quality schools. The ASD uses its authorizing authority to hold schools accountable for meeting the needs of all students.
- Community engagement and participation. With a core belief that community engagement must start early and be the joint responsibility of all levels—district, operator, and school—for turnaround efforts to gain traction and credibility, the ASD worked early to build trust with families and community members. It works with operators to implement strategic community engagement, and has aligned its neighborhood school selection process with its strategy for eliciting community engagement in the school selection and matching process.
Charters in the ASD show initial signs of success, but at only three years into implementation, the ASD’s full impact remains to be seen.
Though they vary widely in policy and practice, experience in the Achievement School District, the Recovery School District, and other statewide turnaround districts points to the central importance of both a sufficient and sustainable talent pipeline and clear, honest communication with students, parents, and communities affected by the changes. Tennessee also shows that statewide districts can affect district-led turnaround efforts, as seen in how Shelby County Schools have made a strong effort to address its low-performing schools.
Start of a Teacher-Led Revolution? Ask the Teacher-Leaders!
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change.”
Last week, Public Impact convened a select group of 90 teachers, principals, district administrators, and national education organization leaders in Chapel Hill, N.C., to plan the future of Opportunity Culture (OC).
The goal: Learn from pioneering OC districts and teachers and plan ahead to improve this work, with help from leaders of national education organizations.
Our message: We want to help OC districts and schools support principals and teacher-leaders who, in turn, are providing all teachers with significant support on the job every day.
The message we heard back from teachers and principals: Keep this going and grow it faster—within schools, across districts, and across the U.S.
“We had to move the breakout rooms at the last minute when the session on scaling up Opportunity Culture drew the largest crowd. We had scheduled it for the smallest room, not the largest,” notes Stephanie Dean, vice president of teacher and leader policy for Public Impact.
A motivating opening panel of teacher-leaders, all Opportunity Culture Fellows chosen by their districts for teaching excellence and leadership, brought the message home: This works. Districts, find a way to keep and expand Opportunity Culture. Bring it to more teachers and students, now.
“The district needs to create more of this—a strong district commitment is crucial. … We had the highest growth scores in math in grades three through eight in the district, and we’re not a small district. So students are growing, and growing at a rapid pace.”— Middle school Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) Karen Wolfson, Nashville, Tenn., who led both novice and veteran teachers to high growth.
“Keep this alive. It’s such a great thing, and so exciting.”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Karen von Klahr, Cabarrus County, N.C., who is also featured in a video about supporting new teachers.
“This past year we saw tremendous progress in [my school’s] MCL teams’ [test scores]. But beyond just the academics, we saw a decrease in behavior referrals as well, and we credit the MCLs working more closely with teachers for that…..I am growing professionally … so much more than any other teaching position, instructional coach, that I’ve done in the past.”— Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Maggie Vadala, Syracuse, N.Y.
“Empowering teachers has been incredible. My team was in tears this year when we found out that we made growth for the first time—it was so incredible to see all that hard work finally pay off and for them to buy into all this that I was pushing last year.”—Biology Multi-Classroom Leader Erin Burns, Charlotte, N.C., who went from reaching 80 students a day to about 500 students in a high-poverty high school, and who began leading a team last year that had made negative growth in its previous three years.
“It’s great, it’s working, teachers are happy, kids are happy, parents are happy!”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Danielle Bellar, Charlotte, N.C.
A panel of principals who have achieved high growth using OC models followed:
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change. … We need to share this work.”—Alison Harris Welcher, who was principal of an Opportunity Culture middle school last year, when its students made extremely high growth, now director of school leadership for the Project L.I.F.T. school zone.
“Teaching is a team sport. … We see that in two years of this work, our math team led the highest gains in the city, teacher absenteeism dramatically reduced … student discipline fell in an astronomical change, because the culture of the school became one of aspiration.”—Christian Sawyer, formerly principal of a Nashville Opportunity Culture middle school.
Watch last week’s new Teacher Support in an Opportunity Culture video—drawn from our interviews with teachers and multi-classroom leaders, who just couldn’t stop talking about the long-awaited support they get and give to help everyone extend great teaching to all their students.
And we debuted our new Opportunity Culture: Teaching, Leading, Learning—a fun six-minute cartoon video showing what an Opportunity Culture is and what it means to all those teachers who want great things happening in their schools and careers. Share it with everyone you know who’s affected by K–12 education today!
What we saw and heard last week was true “teacher voice,” emphatically speaking to those with the power to spread a school revolution that brings an Opportunity Culture to all.
Indianapolis First to Put Opportunity Culture Into Contract
The Indianapolis school board and teachers union recently became the first in the country to include Opportunity Culture roles in their new contract, offering pay supplements of up to $18,300—35 percent of the district’s average salary. That comes on top of a major base pay raise—the first in five years—for teachers across the board.
Those pay decisions mean that in 2016–17, for example, a 16-year teacher will be able to earn $77,700 by taking on the highest-paid Opportunity Culture role, leading a team of four to six teachers. (Take note: This pay in Indianapolis is equivalent to pay of more than $110,000 in Washington, D.C. or more than $175,000 in Manhattan.)
The changes are part of an ambitious strategic plan for Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), under the leadership of Superintendent Lewis Ferebee. The contract was ratified by 93 percent of the union members and approved in a 6–0 vote of the IPS Board of School Commissioners.
The Opportunity Culture initiative, created by Public Impact, includes seven districts in five states in 2015–16. Opportunity Culture models extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. Schools provide additional school-day time for planning and collaboration, often with teacher-leaders leading teams and providing frequent, on-the-job development.
A team of teachers and administrators at each school decides how to redo schedules and reallocate money to fund pay supplements permanently, in contrast to temporarily grant-funded programs. Opportunity Culture schools in IPS are expected to reallocate funds primarily from vacant positions to pay for the supplements.
The Indianapolis Education Association voted to include multiple Opportunity Culture roles in the contract, with the highest pay for multi-classroom leaders, who continue to teach while leading a team. These “MCLs” coach, co-teach, co-plan and collaborate with their team teachers, while taking accountability for the learning outcomes of all the students the team serves. In IPS, an MCL who leads a team of one teacher and a paraprofessional known as a reach associate will earn a $6,800 stipend. MCLs who lead a team of two to three teachers and a reach associate will earn an $11,400 stipend. Those leading a team of four to six teachers and two reach associates will earn $18,300 stipends.
All teachers teaching on an MCL-led team will earn $1,300 supplements, if the school can afford to do this for each team in the school.
In contrast, of the 120 large-district contracts in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s national database, most stipends are less than $3,000, and the biggest specified leadership stipend (for department chairs in Wichita, Kansas) is $8,614. The Indianapolis Public Schools’ maximum Opportunity Culture supplement of $18,300 is more than double that amount.
The contract also includes $6,800 supplements for “expanded-impact teachers,” great teachers who extend their reach to at least 33 percent more students with paraprofessional support, but who do not lead teams. These teachers may use enhanced digital instruction, specialization at the elementary level, and other models that include enhanced paraprofessional support.
“We are delighted and impressed by the collaborative environment and genuine commitment we see on the part of both the district and the union in Indianapolis,” said former teacher and Public Impact senior vice president Lucy Steiner, who is leading Public Impact’s assistance to IPS schools with these roles. “We will be working with the district and schools to ensure that teachers have the support they need to be effective in these new roles.” The Joyce Foundation is providing partial support to launch Public Impact’s work with IPS.
IPS is the second collective bargaining district in which the local teachers union has supported Opportunity Culture roles, but the first to include the roles in its contract for all teachers.
Read more:
- “Eye-popping salary increases for teacher-leaders”:Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week’s Teacher Beat–Indianapolis Pact Couples New Teacher Roles and Big Pay Boosts
- IPS teachers view strategic plan, initiatives firsthand: WISH-TV News
- With a strategic plan and teacher pay overhaul, will a new era dawn for IPS?: Scott Elliott at Chalkbeat Indiana
- Deal between IPS and its union means big pay raises for teachers: Scott Elliott at Chalkbeat Indiana
- Behind the Headline: Indianapolis Pact Couples New Teacher Roles and Big Pay: Education Next