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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …