Public Impact News & Views

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…

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…

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…

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.

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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Do you know teachers eager for a job full of opportunities to reach more students on empowered, teacher-led teams, and to earn more–potentially a lot more? Watch short videos about Project L.I.F.T.’s implementation of Opportunity Culture school models here and here. Project L.I.F.T. is hiring now for the 2014-15 school year. Charlotte’s Project L.I.F.T. zone of high-need schools was the nation’s first pilot of Opportunity Culture school models…

The Opportunity Culture website is chock-full of materials to explain how our school models–such as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swap–work. You can read the detailed models themselves, financial details about the models, broader overviews such as An Opportunity Culture for All or materials specifically for teachers–or you can just work your…

What do Phalen Leadership Academy and Carpe Diem-Meridian have in common? These Indianapolis charter schools share a belief in great teachers, the power of blended learning to back up those teachers and individualize each student’s instruction, and the support of the Indiana Charter School Board (ICSB). Two case studies out now from Public Impact examine the schools’ approaches to blended learning in their first years. Commissioned by the ICSB, the reports provide…

Four of the highest-need schools in the Syracuse City School District, New York’s fifth-largest district, are using teacher-led teams to design new staffing models for their struggling schools to use in fall 2014. These school models extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. The schools join the national Opportunity Culture initiative, which includes schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Metro Nashville,…

“The teacher is the cornerstone of all this work.”–Denise Watts, zone superintendent, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Take a peek into Project L.I.F.T.’s Opportunity Culture work in this video from the 2014 N.C. Emerging Issues Forum. Hear Charlotte’s Denise Watts, John Wall, and Rebecca Thompson talk about L.I.F.T.’s efforts to close achievement gaps using Opportunity Culture models, giving teachers career paths that create leadership opportunities without leaving the classroom, for higher pay: “If you don’t invest in them, if you…