Public Impact News & Views

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…

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…

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…

High-need schools. Lagging student performance. Teacher churn. “We’ve tried everything.” For many school principals, this may sound unpleasantly familiar. At two Charlotte schools, though, the principals found something they hadn’t tried: creating an Opportunity Culture for their students and teachers. By extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students—for much higher pay,within available budgets, and adding time to plan, collaborate, and improve—the schools saw a way to address their dilemmas using the…

What brings excellent teachers in droves to apply for jobs in hard-to-staff schools? Project L.I.F.T. in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District started by offering a complete Opportunity Culture package of career advancement roles that let great teachers stay in the classroom, help more students, and collaborate with and lead peers. These roles provide significantly higher pay and offer on-the-job development to all teachers–within regular school budgets. With that package on offer, four key recruitment steps got…

Better-prepared new teachers, more adults in every classroom, more small-group instruction, more adults caring for every student—how can a school wrap all that up in one package? Three Metropolitan Nashville Opportunity Culture schools are trying a novel approach with paid, yearlong student teaching positions. In a new case study, Public Impact examines this “aspiring teachers” program and its early implementation. In 2013–14, the…

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…

Before Thanksgiving, we shared this video of Metro Nashville multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) telling why they love what they do; now, hear their team teachers share why they love working on MCL teams in an Opportunity Culture! Lead teachers at Buena Vista Elementary serve on MCL teams with “aspiring teachers” who work in yearlong, paid student teaching positions. As you’ll hear, they get the sort of daily, immediately…

Need more to be thankful for this year? Add these committed, enthusiastic, deeply determined teacher-leaders to your list! I recently interviewed multi-classroom leaders in in three Metro Nashville schools that use Opportunity Culture models. Videographer Beverley Tyndall and I couldn’t wait to share at least a few bits of these inspiring interviews, and we’ll soon be posting more videos from Opportunity Culture team teachers and principals–for whom we’re also quite thankful! For now, enjoy hearing…

In the U.S., STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) get a lot of press lately. But it’s still hard for leaders to connect the dots: Too few skilled STEM teachers lead to too few students embracing STEM subjects, leading to too few STEM-trained workers to fill available jobs. The consequences for students-turned-job-seekers, businesses, and the U.S. economy—where STEM jobs are an economic growth multiplier—are enormous. The statistics are grim. In Reaching All Students with Excellent…

To help all students reach their potential, district leaders must ensure that every student has consistent access to excellent teaching. Opportunity Culture compensation and career path structures help make that possible, and the new guide out today from Public Impact shows how. Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide shows how districts can design teacher career paths that will keep excellent teachers in the classroom and…

What students want–great teachers every year–and what teachers want–career advancement without leaving teaching, on-the-job professional learning and collaboration, and the chance to help more students succeed–come together in an Opportunity Culture. What’s the missing piece? State policies to back up schools and districts and their educators committed to reaching many more students with excellent teachers and their teams, for more pay, within budget and without forcing class-size increases. In the just-released <a href="http://opportunityculture.org/seizing-opportunity-at-the-top/" target="_blank"…

Short-term. Sporadic. Disconnected: Just a few of the words used to describe current professional development for teachers. School leaders are stretched too thin to provide routine feedback and coaching – and they aren’t in the classroom with teachers day to day. Without more guidance and support, too many teachers are being robbed of the opportunity to achieve the higher level of success with students of which they are capable. But it doesn’t have to be that way….