A great article in Saturday’s Charlotte Observer highlighted what some Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) make. As noted, 26 MCLs in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools receive supplements of $16,000 to $23,000–within school budgets, not from temporary grants, done by reallocating budgets. But did you know that many others working in Opportunity Culture roles in CMS make more, […]
5 Steps to Design Highly Paid Teacher Career Paths
To help all students reach their potential, district leaders must ensure that every student has consistent access to excellent teaching. Opportunity Culture compensation and career path structures help make that possible, and the new guide out today from Public Impact shows how.
Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide shows how districts can design teacher career paths that will keep excellent teachers in the classroom and extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget. When districts design these paths, they create opportunities:
- for excellent teachers to reach more students directly and by leading teaching teams,
- for solid teachers to contribute to excellence immediately, and
- for all teachers to receive the support and development they deserve.
The full guide walks a district through the organizing steps and details of designing Opportunity Culture pay and career paths that fit its needs and values. It includes an overview of key Opportunity Culture concepts, graphics and explanations detailing new school models and roles, and assistance for evaluating the impact of different compensation design choices. The steps guide districts to ensuring financial sustainability and designing a complete career lattice.
The summary provides a brief overview and graphics that show how pay and career paths work at a glance.
How a State Could Achieve Major Gains in Learning, Pay, Economy
For several years, we’ve been asking teachers and districts to imagine: Imagine schools and a profession where all teachers can improve their teaching, be rewarded for getting better, and reach more students with excellent instruction—by creating an Opportunity Culture for teachers and students. Districts are responding: As of spring 2014, four districts nationally are piloting Opportunity Culture models, and one, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, is taking its pilot efforts to scale based on recruiting results and demand from schools.
But what if a whole state reimagined the teaching profession and pursued an Opportunity Culture for all? What benefits might accrue for students, teachers and the state as a whole?
Using North Carolina as an example for analysis, Public Impact ran the numbers—and the results weren’t small.
Opportunity Culture models redesign jobs to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget—typically in collaborative teams on which all teachers can pursue instructional excellence together and are formally accountable for all of the students they serve. They are designed to transform the traditional teaching environment and provide new career paths for teachers that allow them to advance their careers without leaving the classroom.
If three-fourths of North Carolina’s classrooms were to implement Opportunity Culture models over one generation of students—about 16 years of implementation—we projected, using conservative assumptions, that:
- Students on average would gain 3.4 more years’ worth of learning than in a traditional school model in the K–12 years.
- Teachers leading teams would earn up to $848,000 more in a 35-year career, with considerably higher figures possible for large-span teacher-leader roles not included in this analysis.
- Teachers joining teams to extend their reach could earn approximately an additional $240,000 over their careers.
- State income tax revenue would be up to $700 million higher in present-value terms over 16 years of implementation; increased corporate and sales tax revenues are not included.
- State domestic product would increase by $4.6 billion to $7.7 billion in present-value terms over the next 16 years.
And that’s just using current numbers for North Carolina, where pay is near the bottom nationally. Teachers leading teams in states with pay closer to the national average would earn up to $1 million more in a 35-year career. (Public Impact has separately suggested that a 10 percent average base pay increase is also needed for teachers in North Carolina.)
Public Impact’s Op-Ed: Be Bold on Teacher Pay
Public Impact’s co-directors, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, have a message for North Carolina’s leaders in their op-ed published in The (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer: To transform this state, aim higher.
The Hassels’ op-ed, “N.C. must be bold on increasing teacher pay,” calls for “audacious, achievable goals”: Noting the Opportunity Culture work being done in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to improve teachers’ jobs and pay them more, the Hassels call on North Carolina’s leaders to transform the state by extending that work and focusing on needed priority and policy changes that would create a surge in student learning, grow the state’s economy, and increase teachers’ career earnings.
More coming soon from Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture work: Watch for an announcement on the second N.C. district to join Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the Opportunity Culture initiative (see more about an Opportunity Culture in other districts here), and watch for a policy brief next week detailing the economic benefits to North Carolina and its teachers discussed in the op-ed.
NC must be bold on increasing teacher pay
With all the talk about teacher pay, no proposal is as ambitious as North Carolina needs. Making early-career pay moderately competitive, affecting a fraction of teachers, works only if leaders are content leaving North Carolina near the bottom of the barrel. North Carolina is our home. “Not the worst” and even “average” do not describe […]
N.C. must invest to magnify the impact of great teachers
By Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel; first published in The News & Observer. North Carolina will never make the educational strides it needs until the best educators have far greater impact, for a lot more pay. A year ago in these pages, we called for state leaders to raise teachers’ base pay an average […]
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, for more pay, within budget (not temporary grants)—making significant pay increases possible for all teachers.
Savings and cost calculations of several models–Multi-Classroom Leadership, Elementary Subject Specialization, Time-Technology Swaps, and the combination at the secondary level of Multi-Classroom Leadership with Time-Technology Swaps–show that schools could pay teachers approximately 20 to 130 percent more—without increasing class sizes, and within existing budgets. Even when increasing all team teachers’ pay, schools can still pay teacher-leaders approximately 65 to 80 percent more. And beyond that, reallocating other current spending could offer yet another boost to teachers’ pay, beyond what we have demonstrated so far in our Opportunity Culture models.
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 lead reach more students, for more pay, within budget, without having to increase class sizes. Paraprofessionals working with leadership and direction from teachers supervise the online-learning time. Lower wage rates for paraprofessionals enable higher pay for the excellent teachers and their teams. These teaching teams can teach more students without increasing class size because, at a given time, some of their students are online while teachers work in person with others. Schools can even reduce class sizes and still pay teachers more.
Scalable Secondary-Level School Models Increase Teacher Pay, Planning Time
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 series, which indicate that middle and high school teachers who use blended learning and lead teaching teams can earn 20 to 67 percent more, within current budgets, and without class-size increases. This requires new school models with redesigned teacher roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students. Using these models, teachers also gain 5 to 15 additional school hours weekly to plan and improve instruction collaboratively.
Could You Give All Students Excellent Teachers—and Pay More?
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 teachers take responsibility for all students’ learning in core subjects;
- pays all teachers more, and excellent teachers who lead teams far more, within budget
- gives teachers frequent school-day time for planning, team collaboration, and on-the-job development; and
- does not reduce student learning time.
It’s a tall order, but new school models, now being implemented in pilot schools in the U.S., can make what we call an Opportunity Culture a reality.
Designed to help district and school design teams rethink the one-teacher-one-classroom mode, these scenarios ask planners to assume the role of a school principal. The principal must develop a plan to give all students access to excellent teachers and their teams with the school’s current staff, without any new funding. The principal must make the school attractive by both paying teachers more and offering them a great place to work—full of teaching career advancement opportunities and job-embedded development led by teacher-leaders.
In the News: Paid Student Teachers in Nashville
NewsChannel5 profiles the paid student teachers program at Robert Churchwell Museum Magnet Elementary, one of the Opportunity Culture pilot schools in the Metro Nashville Public Schools’ iZone. Hailey Hunt, one of 12 “aspiring teachers,” discusses why this model for student teaching pleases her.
In the News: Report on Teacher Pay and the Recession
In a new report on the effects of the recession on teacher salaries in 41 major school districts, the National Council on Teacher Quality found that teacher raises for experience and market forces like inflation were one-third to one-half of what they were at the beginning of the recession. Eighty percent of the districts studied had a total pay freeze or pay cut in at least one school year between 2008-09 and 2011-12–although none had a cut or freeze every year, and eight districts showed positive salary growth each year between 2008-09 and 2011-12. See the report for details on how the districts adjusted pay in the face of tight budgets.
One way districts could respond is by employing an Opportunity Culture: See our “Paying Teachers More” page to understand how Opportunity Culture models could increase excellent teachers’ pay up to approximately 130%, without increasing class sizes and within available budgets. In some variations, schools may pay all teachers more, sustainably. Combining these and other sustainable models to extend the reach of excellent teachers and promote excellence by all instructional staff may produce even greater savings to fund teacher pay increases and other priorities, while producing excellent student outcomes.