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Public Impact News & Views

Who We Are
Public Impact News & Views

Welcome to our blog, offering news and views from the Public Impact team. Questions or concerns? Contact editor Sharon Kebschull Barrett.

Our most recent blog posts are below. For more, searchable by topic, visit our resource database. To read more posts about our Opportunity Culture initiative, go here.

Creating a Statewide Turnaround District: Early Lessons from 5 States

February 5, 2014
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 as …
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For More High-Quality Charters, Focus on Policy, Authorizer Changes

January 29, 2014
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 High-Performing Charter Schools and …
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In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture Expansion

January 10, 2014
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 years after that, with almost …
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Charlotte to expand Opportunity Culture to almost half its schools

January 9, 2014
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 long, the field has …
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Opportunity Culture in the News: Thanksgiving Advice!

November 26, 2013
“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 to kick off your …
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Focus Federal Investments to Give Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers

November 20, 2013
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 …
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Great Teachers Can Teach More Students, Even Without Raising Class Sizes

November 19, 2013
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 reading that finding will still fret over …
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In the News: Opportunity Culture Appearances

November 15, 2013
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 Education, we suggest four policy levers the federal government could …
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6 Ways to Pay All Teachers More–Within Budget

October 31, 2013
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, for …
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Multi-Classroom Leader: Why I Love This Teaching/Leading Model

October 29, 2013
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 careers–and why using the MCL …
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Using Blended Learning to Pay Teachers More

October 28, 2013
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 lead reach …
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Scalable Secondary-Level School Models Increase Teacher Pay, Planning Time

October 24, 2013
Recently, I was chatting with a secondary school-level teacher who co-leads her teacher-run charter school. In her school, scheduling and staffing deliberately provide abundant teacher collaboration time and teacher-leadership, crucial for teachers to innovate and improve as they serve the school’s high-need population. She asked, “Emily, how can we make models like this scalable and appealing to more schools, so that districts use them, too?” We have just released our latest calculations in the Opportunity Culture …
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Report: Trends, Possible Improvements in School Quality Rating Systems

October 23, 2013
A new review of 25 school quality rating systems by Public Impact’s Lyria Boast and Tim Field for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools revealed clear trends that may help rating system designers and users think about optimal system designs. The rating systems inventoried included some from state departments of education, large public school districts, charter associations and authorizers, and private news and advocacy organizations. Among the trends they found among the systems were: the inclusion …
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In the News: Opportunity Culture Appearances

October 11, 2013
Recent Opportunity Culture appearances: The Education Commission of the States recommends our new “Opportunity Culture for All” brief in its October 9 newsletter, saying: “The bad news: Between 1970 and 2010, per pupil spending went up almost 150%, but only 11% went to teachers. Teacher salaries and student outcomes stagnated. There’s a better way, the authors argue. Junk the one-teacher-one-classroom model. Create teaching teams led by one excellent teacher so more kids get exposed. Use digital …
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Could You Give All Students Excellent Teachers—and Pay More?

October 10, 2013
What if every U.S. student had a new civil right to an excellent teacher, every year, in all core subjects? What if schools also had to pay teachers at least 20 percent more, within budget? Could you design a school that met those demands? Try it: Use Public Impact’s free Opportunity Culture scenarios to see if you could design a rural or urban, high-poverty school that closes gaps and helps all students leap ahead by letting excellent …
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