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 two elementary schools and a middle school, part of Nashville’s Innovation Zone created …
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 multi-classroom leadership, setting up the feedback loops from …
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 useful, on-the-job feedback and collaboration that teachers say …
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 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 …