Public Impact News & Views

Opportunity Culture continues to grow: After an initial year at North Little Rock Middle School, the Arkansas Department of Education has expanded its Opportunity Culture pilot to three more districts. The school districts of Forrest City, Lead Hill, and Lincoln are joining the Opportunity Culture initiative—to which the state committed in its Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan—with plans to begin using Opportunity Culture roles in the 2019–20 school year. North Little Rock, now in its second…

By Hadley Moore In 2015–16, I was a high school English teacher at an elite, private college-prep high school. In 2017-18, I became an assistant principal at an inner-city elementary school. How on earth did that happen? I loved being a high school English teacher. It was my dream job, molding and shaping young people’s lives through literary works that made my heart sing. I could have quite happily remained ensconced in my classroom for…

As student learning continues to benefit, teachers want to keep and grow Opportunity Culture: That’s just one of the many findings and stats to report from the 2018-19 update of the Opportunity Culture data dashboard. Public Impact, which created and leads the national Opportunity Culture initiative, updates the dashboard annually. Highlights from the dashboard include: Schools—Opportunity Culture now has 302 schools committed. Opportunity Culture grew from seven schools implementing in 2013–14 to 151 schools in 2018–19….

By Amber Hines. This column first appeared on EducationNC. As soon as students enter my classroom for a small-group session, I know what question is coming: “Are we going to record?” Elementary school students love using technology. But teachers must use students’ valuable learning time wisely: Technology should be meaningful, data-driven, and help meet our learning goals. Our students are digital natives, so they’re confident with technology; it can give them the freedom to share…

How much does Indiana need to catch up to surrounding states on teacher pay? The short answer? $658.1 million—that’s the cost of bringing Indiana teacher pay to the regional median. In a thorough look at the teacher crisis in Indiana written by Public Impact’s Stephanie Dean, Stand for Children Indiana and Teach Plus make the case that teachers aren’t being paid enough, they have little room for career growth, and the state does a poor…

New Jersey’s youth face enormous, long-standing challenges, many stemming from historic discrimination and endemic poverty. Nearly 4,000 youth between the ages of 16 and 20 are not in school, and about 3,000 more between 15 and 21 are at risk of leaving school without a high school diploma. Half of the city’s 16- to 19-year-olds, and a third of 20- to 24-year-olds, are unemployed. Most of these youth have experienced violence or other trauma, or…

Across the United States, school districts have a new option for their schools—“autonomous district schools”—that gives schools the freedoms of charter schools and districts a way to grow high-quality, innovative schools and diversify public school options at scale. Like charter schools, autonomous district schools are freed from innovation-inhibiting state and district policies, allowing talented educators to make academic and operational changes that better serve students. But rather than operating under a charter that is completely…

In 2000, IDEA Public Schools opened its first campus on the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, IDEA operates 79 schools serving 45,000 students in six regions, proving that it’s possible to grow rapidly while maintaining quality. And IDEA plans to keep its foot on the gas. It’s on track to enroll 100,000 students by 2022, and one day, a million. Elsewhere in the U.S., charter growth is slowing down as charter operators struggle to hire enough great…

In the latest round of funding for the state’s Advanced Teaching Roles pilot, the North Carolina State Board of Education awarded grants to three districts that will implement Opportunity Culture roles—Halifax County and Hertford County in eastern North Carolina and Lexington City Schools in Davidson County. These rural and small-town, high-poverty districts struggle with academic success and attracting and retaining teachers. They will use Opportunity Culture roles, which have produced outstanding student growth elsewhere, to…

Public Impact is excited to announce that our Opportunity Culture initiative is partnering with the College Board and the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) to reach rural school districts with excellent NCSSM teachers. In the first phase of this pilot, an excellent NCSSM teacher will become an Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leader for a team of pre-calculus teachers spread across rural North Carolina in the spring 2019 semester. The first phase will lay the…

We’re excited to share the latest results from Opportunity Culture schools in North Carolina, according to the data released by the state. The following is a column by Public Impact’s co-presidents, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, first published by EducationNC on January 2, 2019. As the founders of the Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of great teaching to many more students, we keep a tight focus on how students and teachers…

Today’s Hechinger Report highlights Opportunity Culture in Edgecombe County Public Schools, a rural North Carolina district, noting its effects on: teacher recruitment (schools using this model have historically started the year with two to four  empty teaching positions, but this year had none), “profound collaboration among teachers,” and strong student growth (North Edgecombe High School has exceeded growth expectations two years in a row and entered the top 20 percent of schools in the state…

In Friday’s EdNC.org., Mandy Ableidinger asks, “The most recent NC end of third grade reading assessment results show scores hardly shifting from last year and continued racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps. What can we do differently?” Referring to our recent report, Closing Achievement Gaps in Diverse Schools: An Action Guide for District Leaders, Ableidinger, the policy and practice leader for the NC Early Childhood Foundation, says: Public Impact’s research-based recommendations align with the [NC Pathways…

To close achievement gaps, education leaders must adopt more complete approaches to outstanding learning for all, secure and healthy learners, and a culture of equity within low- and moderate-poverty schools. A shortfall in any of these three areas within a school magnifies the impact of unequal access to resources—educational, personal, and sociopolitical—outside of school. In a new report commissioned by Oak Foundation, Closing Achievement Gaps in Diverse Schools: An Action Guide for District Leaders, Public…

By Elizabeth Annette Bartlett. This column first appeared on EducationNC. If, as a teacher who sees success with one class of students, I could reach twice as many students per class, why shouldn’t I try? That’s the question I asked myself in trying to solve a dilemma my middle school science students faced. In the end, it wasn’t quite that simple — but the lessons we learned will continue to benefit students. In the 2015–16…