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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.

Done Well, School Restarts Make a Difference for Students

May 17, 2016

This column was first published on May 17, 2016, on msdf.org, home of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. This is part of a blog series about one way we can help our nation’s lowest performing schools. In this series, we will introduce the concept of restart and will highlight: Who’s doing it, how it works and, ultimately, does it work. You can find the entire series here. Over the past year, we’ve shared our experiences…

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Opportunity Culture Voices: What Is My Job, Anyway? An MCL’s Thoughts

May 16, 2016

“When I became a multi-classroom leader in 2013, the position was new to our school, district and state—new to the nation, in fact. I have vivid memories of the questions I received, especially in an early meeting with team teachers, when one said, ‘So what exactly do you do now? What is your job, anyway?’ “I remember feeling a little flushed and nervous, considering I wasn’t 100-percent sure, myself, of everything I would do. With…

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Georgia Schools Join Opportunity Culture Movement

May 13, 2016
Georgia’s Fulton County Schools district has joined the national Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. In 2015–16, Benjamin E. Banneker High School and Woodland Middle School, on the south side of Atlanta, are the district’s first to design Opportunity Culture plans for 2016–17 implementation. Both schools are part of Fulton County’s achievement zone, created in 2015 to focus…
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Measuring School Turnaround Success: Report Explores Options

May 5, 2016

Turning a failing school around takes hard work—and can be even harder to sustain. And right now, most states don’t even have a clear, robust definition of turnaround success. So Public Impact collaborated with the Center on School Turnaround on Measuring School Turnaround Success to explore an approach that states, districts, and schools can adapt to fit their own contexts. The authors detail the analyses conducted to test a critical part of this approach—measuring academic…

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Every School Can Have a Great Principal: A Fresh Vision for How

April 22, 2016
This column first appeared on Education Next. Great teachers matter—we all know that. But great principals matter nearly as much. We recently profiled three principals who achieved strong student learning growth in their schools in tough circumstances. Forming and leading a team of teacher-leaders proved crucial to all. But then what? Can great principals take their leadership to the next level and stay connected to teachers and students? Could…
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Opportunity Culture Voices: Showing Veteran Teachers Some Love

April 21, 2016

“We’ve all heard the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” but how many of us have actually stopped to wonder why? Is the dog just apathetic? Insecure in his ability to learn? Unsure of the goal? Maybe the greater question to ask is, “Why not?” With the right motivation, feedback, love, and support, I could have my 13-year-old black lab, Linus, rolling over by sunrise. This, however, can only happen…

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Learning from Tennessee: Growing High-Quality Charter Schools

April 15, 2016
In just five years, Tennessee went from 29 charter schools and six charter management organizations (CMOs) serving 5,500 kids to 98 schools and 24 CMOs serving 29,000 students—while emphasizing the need to replicate high-performing and high-potential charters in underserved communities. How did Tennessee do it, and what lessons can other education leaders learn from this state? As we document in Public Impact’s new report for the Charter School Growth Fund, Growing a High-Quality Charter Sector:…
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Is Multi-Classroom Leadership Right for You?

March 24, 2016

If you’re interested in: –Spreading your excellent teaching to many more students –Leading a team of teaching peers toward the great outcomes you’ve gotten with your students by: collaborating with them co-teaching coaching co-planning giving (and getting) consistent, on-the-job, genuine professional development and support –Taking responsibility for the learning of all students in the team –Making significantly higher pay for taking on this leadership and responsibility …then a Multi-Classroom Leader role is waiting for your…

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School Turnarounds: How Successful Principals Use Teacher Leadership

March 17, 2016

As the Opportunity Culture initiative was beginning, three principals signed on to lead low-performing, high-poverty schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Metropolitan Nashville districts. The odds were stacked against them and their students—one school, for example, has student transiency rates of 70 percent and higher. But within a few short years, their schools all showed very high growth—one school was in the top 1 percent in North Carolina for growth, and the other two received the…

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Opportunity Culture Voices: Raising My Teacher Voice

March 16, 2016

“What does ‘teacher voice’ actually mean? Until this year, it sounded like a nice phrase, but it didn’t hold much meaning for me.

“But I have a job I love, one that shakes up traditional teaching and holds the promise of making a huge difference in students’ and teachers lives—as it did for my students. I wanted to spread the word about my job—and now, with positions like mine under threat at…

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For Charter School Kids’ Sake, Prevent Authorizer Shopping

March 9, 2016

A strength of the charter school community has been its willingness to address quality and accountability issues, especially in the face of inconsistent academic quality among charters. Charter school advocates increasingly realize that great authorizing includes the will and ability to close failing schools. As authorizers and states have increased performance expectations and grown less hesitant to close failing schools, “authorizer shopping” has emerged as a growing threat to overall charter school quality. Authorizer shopping…

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Where Is Teaching Really Different? New Opportunity Culture Video

March 2, 2016

What could you do in an Opportunity Culture? In a new video, teachers in Opportunity Culture schools tell how their roles let them: –Reach more students with great teaching –Lead other teachers without leaving teaching—“the best of both worlds” –Give and get support—“the best part of an Opportunity Culture” –Personalize learning for more students –Help students learn far more –Earn higher pay for the long haul—pay supplements in Opportunity Culture schools range up to 50…

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Hiring Turnaround Leaders Under ESSA–New Training

February 18, 2016
What makes school turnaround leaders special? State and district leaders can understand how to identify, select, and retain great leaders using the research-based competencies specific to successful turnaround leaders, with a new, free three-part professional learning module. Developed through a partnership between the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, the Center on School Turnaround, Public Impact, and the University of Virginia Darden/Curry…
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Opportunity Culture Voices: MCL vs PLC–What’s the Difference?

January 20, 2016

“When out with friends or at dinner parties, I frequently get asked, ‘So what do you do?’ My ‘I’m a biology multi-classroom leader’ response receives perplexed looks, so my boyfriend usually pipes in, ‘It’s kind of like the science department chair’—and then I have to kindly say, ‘Well, sort of, except that I do all this other stuff…’

“As the leader of a five-person teaching team at a high-need Charlotte, N.C., high…

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Opportunity Culture Results: Dashboard 2.0

December 18, 2015

Note: The Opportunity Culture Dashboard has been updated. See the most recent dashboard results here. 22,000+ students reached by Opportunity Culture teachers, more than 800 teachers in advanced or team roles, $2 million in higher pay in one year alone, and more high growth and less low growth than other schools: These are just a few results from the schools in districts launching an Opportunity Culture. Public Impact’s expanded, interactive dashboard on OpportunityCulture.org shows progress in…

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