In September, Public Impact convened its Opportunity Culture Fellows for collaboration and learning, featuring sessions on tools to help educators personalize instruction, the science of reading, strategies of multi-classroom leaders and principals for team leadership and leading schoolwide change, and effective advocacy within schools and districts. On the Opportunity Culture blog, we are sharing some […]
Early Indianapolis Restarts Shed Light About Improvement Strategy
Districts are increasingly joining with external providers—often charter operators—to implement “restarts” as one way to turn around persistently struggling schools. In a restart, a school continues to serve the same community, while its new provider receives operational autonomy in exchange for a contractual commitment to raise student outcomes. Our ongoing research has documented more than […]
Learning From and With Opportunity Culture Fellows
In September, Public Impact convened its Opportunity Culture Fellows for a day of collaboration and learning which featured sessions on tools to help educators personalize instruction, the science of reading, multi-classroom leader & principal strategies for team leadership and leading schoolwide change, and effective advocacy within schools and districts. On the Opportunity Culture blog, we […]
How to Reach Far More Young Children with Excellent Teaching
Read our vision brief: Excellent Teaching for Every Young Child: Opportunity Culture in Early Childhood Education What if far more children ages 0–5 who are in early childhood education and care settings had consistent access to excellent teaching? In these critical developmental years, young children—especially those who have fewer educational and developmental advantages outside of […]
Meeting the Potential of a Virtual Education: Lessons from Operators Making Online Schooling Work
In general, virtual charter schools have had poor outcomes. A 2015 study from CREDO (the Center for Research on Education Outcomes) found that, on average, students enrolled in online charter schools lost 180 days of learning in math and 72 days of learning in reading compared to similar students in brick-and-mortar schools. But virtual schools […]
Why Charter Champions Should Partner with Parents to Support Students with Disabilities: New Report from Public Impact
In Better Together: Why Charter School Champions and Parent Advocates Should Partner to Better Support Students with Disabilities, Public Impact issues a call to action for charter champions—including charter associations, city-based education organizations and other reform organizations that see charters as an integral piece of a thriving system of public schools—to form and deepen partnerships […]
How Charter School Facility Incubators Can Overcome Common Charter Barrier: Case Study from Public Impact
Charter schools frequently confront inadequate facility funding, few affordable and suitable buildings, inadequate facility expertise among charter founders, and gradual expansion of enrollment and grade levels that requires more or new space. Charter school facility incubators provide affordable, short-term space for new and growing charter schools. In a new report, Charter School Facility Incubators: A […]
Public Impact Welcomes Fifth Cohort of Opportunity Culture Fellows
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: […]