This post first appeared in Education Next.
Maybe it’s because we’re turning 50 in the coming year and have together been pondering the plight of the poor and their lost human potential since we were 20. But we’re weary of hearing education reformers pretend that just changing policies and management systems—name your favorite—will put an excellent teacher in every classroom. Even though most of us have spilled voluminous ink on those topics.
What if, instead, change started …
After a year of piloting new staffing models that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, the Syracuse City School District, in partnership with the Syracuse Teachers Association, has expanded its Opportunity Culture initiative in 2015–16 to four more schools. The initiative began in 2014–15 in four of the highest-need schools in Syracuse, which is New York’s fifth-largest school district.
“In the SCSD we are committed to providing …
Extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within available budgets. Provide much more on-the-job, school-day collaboration, planning time, and support to teachers. When a district decides it wants to do this, then what?
Big changes demand big help, and we’ve just released our free Opportunity Culture Toolkit, which walks districts and schools through all the phases of building an Opportunity Culture. In an Opportunity Culture, great teachers …
In an Opportunity Culture, districts and schools offer new roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets and without forcing class-size increases. The new roles put districts in a much stronger position to hire great teachers—but only if they recruit and select well.
We’ve posted two new toolkits to make that work easier, walking human resources officers and principals through the steps to great …
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has made Texas the first state to support multiple districts in creating an 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, …
On RealClearEducation.com today, Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) Kristin Cubbage of Ashley Park Pre-K-8 in Charlotte, N.C., contrasts the support teachers get in an Opportunity Culture school to the support in typical schools—and issues a call to action to policymakers, administrators, and her fellow teachers:
“No school has enough administrators to coach every teacher. In a regular school, the average teacher receives three to five observations yearly. In an Opportunity Culture school, MCLs get to observe their teachers …
Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) is joining the Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of its excellent teachers and teams they lead to more students, for more pay, within budget. With the support of Public Impact, IPS will lay the groundwork by June for up to six schools to opt into piloting Opportunity Culture staffing models, to reach many more students with great teaching and create career paths for teachers to join teams, advance their …
“North Carolina will never make the educational strides it needs until the best educators have far greater impact for a lot more pay,” say Public Impact’s co-directors in an op-ed in Saturday’s Raleigh News and Observer.
Noting that the state’s General Assembly “rightfully added 6 percent focused primarily on early-career teachers’ base pay,” Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel point out that other states also increased salaries for teachers, and likely will again. So, they …
Looking for an overview of an Opportunity Culture, and an example of multi-classroom leadership in action? These could get you started:
Today, Public Impact co-directors Bryan and Emily Hassel kick off a monthly series of posts on Real Clear Education by Opportunity Culture educators. They explain the concepts behind an Opportunity culture as background to the series, which will be followed next month by Charlotte Multi-Classroom Leader Kristin Cubbage on her new role, which lets her …
When Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative, we were clear on the goal: reach as many students as possible with excellent teaching. As our team worked with teachers and principals, we committed to a second goal: provide outstanding, lasting, well-paid career opportunities to educators.
As researchers, we saw many pay and career path programs fall short of those goals–and still see too many today. Too often, pay programs fail to provide opportunities for teachers to …
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 …
“The best of both worlds.”
“There’s no other job like this.”
“This is one of the greatest opportunities teachers have to increase their salary, as well as increasing their skill set, their strategies, and their leadership abilities. I think it’s an amazing opportunity that you just cannot get anywhere else.”
“I think kids are thriving in the environment. I think it’s really powerful.”
“As a professional, this has been the most feedback and constructive criticism in creating this …
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 …
Learn about an Opportunity Culture from some of the people who know it–and love it–best: Ranson IB Middle School multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) Bobby Miles and April Drakeford, along with Principal Alison Harris, and Ashley Park PreK-8 MCL Kristin Cubbage told Andrew Dunn of the Charlotte Observer and TimeWarner Cable News how Opportunity Culture roles keep great teachers in the classroom and provide the support, collaboration, and coaching all teachers need.
“This definitely is my dream job,” …
New Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) Superintendent Ann Clark highlighted the district’s Opportunity Culture career paths in her “State of our Schools” speech Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reports.
Discussing the need to be competitive on teacher pay to retain teachers, Clark pointed out how an Opportunity Culture helps great teachers stay in the classroom while making much more money, using such models as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps. Pay supplements for multi-classroom leaders can be as much as $23,000, …