Syracuse, N.Y., Schools Join Opportunity Culture Initiative
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”
“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…
Listen to the Teachers!
As teachers and leaders pull Opportunity Culture models into five states in 2014 (watch for announcements, coming soon!), what teachers think about their experiences matters enormously.
Listen to their voices: On our new “What Teachers Are Saying” page, teachers from school design teams that chose and adapted models to fit their schools, and the teachers working within those models this year talk about what an Opportunity Culture has…
Watch: How to Get Great Teaching to More Students
How can more students have access to excellent teachers? Increasing class sizes is one way, but we have many other options, Public Impact’s co-director, Bryan C. Hassel, said at Thursday’s “Expanding Access to Great Teachers” discussion at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute–watch it below.
Bryan joined Michael Hansen of the American Institutes for Research, author of “Right-Sizing the Classroom: Making the Most of Great Teachers,” Jean-Claude Brizard, senior…
Creating a Statewide Turnaround District: Early Lessons from 5 States
When states consider taking over chronically underperforming schools or districts by creating “extraordinary authority districts,” they have few examples to follow. Since Louisiana first established a statewide turnaround district in 2003, though, a small but increasing number of states have created “EADs,” providing lessons others can follow in planning their own turnaround approach.
A wide-ranging discussion at a 2013 convening of leaders of five early-implementing EADs–Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Tennessee–yielded many lessons, as well…
For More High-Quality Charters, Focus on Policy, Authorizer Changes
Charter school quality has become a mixed bag: Despite some great schools across the country, most are on par with traditional district schools, and too many underperform. Given the increasing evidence showing that schools that start strong, stay strong, it’s time for policymakers and authorizers to implement the policies and practices needed to grow the great schools and shutter the worst.
Replicating Quality: Policy Recommendations to Support the Replication and Growth of…
In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture Expansion
Thursday’s announcement that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District is scaling up its use of Opportunity Culture models that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget, got some attention. CMS school design teams, which include teachers and school leaders, will integrate the new models into 17 more schools this year, and more schools will join the implementation in each of the two…
Charlotte to expand Opportunity Culture to almost half its schools
We have exciting news today, with potentially big implications for teachers and students: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) announced a scale-up of its use of Opportunity Culture models that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. The Belk Foundation, a local family foundation, announced a rare, three-year commitment to fund the redesign work, after which the models will be financially sustainable.
For far too…
Opportunity Culture in the News: Thanksgiving Advice!
“There’s no better time to convince your whole family that teacher salaries must go up than at Thanksgiving Dinner. You’ve got a captive audience full of loved ones who are too full to move, so ignore the old adage to not discuss politics at the dinner table,” says the Teacher Salary Project in its “Guide to Surviving a Political Conversation at Thanksgiving.”
Check out their script for offering a toast to teachers…
Focus Federal Investments to Give Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers
Excellent teachers—those in the top 20 to 25 percent—are the ones who produce the strong learning growth students need to catch up and pursue advanced work. These teachers, on average, help students make a year and a half worth of learning growth annually. Without excellent teachers consistently, students who start out behind rarely catch up, and students who meet today’s grade-level targets rarely leap ahead to meet rising global standards.
Giving all students access to excellent…
Great Teachers Can Teach More Students, Even Without Raising Class Sizes
Fordham today released a paper by Michael Hansen projecting the impact on student learning if excellent eighth-grade teachers—those in the top 25 percent—were responsible for six or 12 more students per class. He found that moving six students per class to the most effective eighth-grade science and math teachers would have an impact equivalent to removing the bottom 5 percent of teachers.
We imagine many teachers and parents…
In the News: Opportunity Culture Appearances
Recent Opportunity Culture news:
- Focus federal funding on access to excellent teachers: What is one appropriate and effective way for the federal government to catalyze a transformation of America’s public education system? Federal investments could play a pivotal role. In a new brief Public Impact wrote for the Center for American Progress, Giving Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers: A Vision for Focusing Federal Investments in…
6 Ways to Pay All Teachers More–Within Budget
Our fresh approach to paying teachers more is the basic premise of an Opportunity Culture: Use redesigned jobs and age-appropriate technology to reallocate spending toward what matters most—great teaching. But have you wondered just how that works?
Our new three-page brief, 6 Ways to Pay All Teachers More Within Budget, spells it out for you. With Opportunity Culture models, schools can extend the reach of excellent teachers and the teams they lead to more students,…
Multi-Classroom Leader: Why I Love This Teaching/Leading Model
Romain Bertrand, a multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Ranson IB Middle School in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, wants to spread the word: Keep great teachers in the classroom, splitting their time between teaching and leading other teachers–for more pay. In “To be or not to be in the classroom, that is the question…“, Bertrand blogs about the sadness of teachers feeling forced out of the classroom in order to progress in their…
Using Blended Learning to Pay Teachers More
The power and promise of blended learning—to let students learn individually paced basics online, so teachers can focus on personalized, enriched face-to-face instruction—can bring excellent teaching to more students, and enable all teachers to earn at least 20 percent more, sustainably. In addition, teachers can gain planning and collaboration time during school hours.
How? In what we call Time-Technology Swaps—one of the job models in an Opportunity Culture— excellent teachers and the teams they…