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 extend their reach to …
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 Seizing Opportunity at the Top …
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. …
“I glance at my computer clock; it is already time for the next block and I forgot to eat lunch. When a Frenchman forgets about eating, this is a sign that he loves what he does.”
So says Romain Bertrand, the first multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, N.C., today in “Expand Your Reach: New-world role combines coaching teachers and teaching students” on Education Next. Walking readers through a piece of a …
Lacking Leaders: The Challenges of Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Placement, which Public Impact’s Daniela Doyle and Gillian Locke wrote for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, put a needed focus on the importance of finding the best principal for each school. By getting an inside look at the hiring processes of five urban districts around the country, Doyle and Locke highlighted how far short those processes fall, even in districts they deem “ahead of the curve.”
In …
When the charter school cap was lifted in North Carolina in 2011, it set the stage for dramatic growth in the state’s charter sector–and growth in tension between charters and traditional schools.
In January 2014, more than 40 North Carolina education leaders came together to consider the challenges and opportunities of the expanding charter sector. A new report from Self-Help, the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, and Public Impact details their thoughts and recommendations from the convening and …
In Lacking Leaders: The Challenges of Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Placement, Public Impact’s Daniela Doyle and Gillian Locke took an inside look at the hiring processes of five urban districts around the country–and came up with six steps districts can take to hire the best principals for each school.
Written for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Lacking Leaders discusses the need to make the job more appealing, manageable, and appropriately compensated; the need to actively recruit …
As we’ve noted in previous posts, schools continue to join the Opportunity Culture initiative, eager to work with teachers on redesigning their teaching roles and career paths. As the first year of implementation in Opportunity Culture pilot schools wound down, we looked at the impact of just the 31 leading-edge schools who had joined the initiative by April. (Six more high schools joined in May but are not included in these figures, as they hadn’t …
For these CMS teachers, change doesn’t mean exodus: In Friday’s Charlotte Observer, reporter Ann Doss Helms checked back in with Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) teachers who’d been in the news in the past year over their frustrations–reflected across North Carolina classrooms–with teacher pay turmoil in the state. Helms wrote:
After a year of frustration with low pay and challenging conditions, teachers Marie Calabro, Dave Hartzell and Justin Ashley have packed their boxes and left their jobs.
Despite talk of …
Calling school models in an Opportunity Culture a simple, harmonious solution, Editorial Page Editor of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer highlighted the work of Public Impact and Co-Directors Bryan and EmilyAyscue Hassel in his column yesterday.
In Let NC’s top teachers teach—and earn—more, Barnett said:
“With all the angst and alarm over the General Assembly’s approach to K-12 education, hearing Bryan Hassel talk about how to create more effective schools is like listening to a …
At the Education Writers Association conference in Nashville on Tuesday, I listened to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan reiterate his belief that “education is the civil rights issue of our generation.”
On that, we at Public Impact couldn’t agree more.
He also talked about the outrage over our nation’s achievement gaps and worries about opportunity gaps. The country has, he said, a “courage gap” and an “action gap.”
We’d like to direct his attention to some teachers and …
For several years, we’ve been asking teachers and districts to imagine: Imagine schools and a profession where all teachers can improve their teaching, be rewarded for getting better, and reach more students with excellent instruction—by creating an Opportunity Culture for teachers and students. Districts are responding: As of spring 2014, four districts nationally are piloting Opportunity Culture models, and one, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, is taking its pilot efforts to scale based on recruiting results and demand from …
A second North Carolina district has joined its neighbor in implementing an Opportunity Culture: Three elementary schools and seven high schools in Cabarrus County, N.C., will pilot Opportunity Culture models in 2014–15–affecting approximately 1,000 students in the first year of implementation alone.
Public Impact will assist some of the school teams in redesigning their schools. These schools will each have a team of administrators and teachers to choose and adapt the models that fit their school …
Public Impact’s co-directors, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, have a message for North Carolina’s leaders in their op-ed published in The (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer: To transform this state, aim higher.
The Hassels’ op-ed, “N.C. must be bold on increasing teacher pay,” calls for “audacious, achievable goals”: Noting the Opportunity Culture work being done in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to improve teachers’ jobs and pay them more, the Hassels call on North Carolina’s leaders to …
With all the talk about teacher pay, no proposal is as ambitious as North Carolina needs. Making early-career pay moderately competitive, affecting a fraction of teachers, works only if leaders are content leaving North Carolina near the bottom of the barrel.
North Carolina is our home. “Not the worst” and even “average” do not describe the people’s aspirations in this state.
We are recognized national experts on teacher pay, having published papers for the bipartisan National Governors …