This planner and tools guide district, school, and charter management organization leaders in selecting teachers and staff members for Opportunity Culture roles.
Evaluation, Accountability, and Professional Development in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Guide
This guide will help education leaders align evaluation and its uses with an Opportunity Culture and similar school models and career paths.
Opportunity Culture Voices: Getting the Recipe Right for Teacher Leadership
What’s the recipe for an effective system of teacher leadership that can lead to higher student growth? My school, Rocky River Elementary, in Cabarrus County, N.C., ranked at the bottom of student proficiency and student growth in recent years. We clearly needed to cook up something new. So we stirred up equal parts trust-building and […]
Opportunity Culture Voices: My Unexpected Journey to Teacher Leadership
“Come join the exciting new initiative at Meachem Elementary. We are pursuing proven strategies to increase student achievement by increasing adult leadership and the capacity to more effectively reach all students; this will assist in raising our test scores, and provide teachers with more support by their peers, smaller reading-group sizes, classroom management support, and […]
Fresh Ideas for ESSA Excellence: Four Opportunities for State Leaders
State and district leaders, here’s your chance: Under ESSA (the 2016 Every Student Succeeds Act), you can use your new funding flexibility to take a new approach that focuses on excellence for teachers and students. In a new brief and one-page executive summary, we explain four opportunities to achieve a culture of excellence under ESSA, […]
New Vignettes: How 4 Pioneering Teacher-Leaders Led Their Teams
What does teacher-leadership look like when teachers lead a team while continuing to teach? For four pioneering multi-classroom leaders in high-need elementary, middle, and high schools, it starts with taking accountability for up to 500 students and leading a collaborative teaching team toward higher growth and personalized learning for all those students. These teacher-leaders took […]
Is Multi-Classroom Leadership Right for You?
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 […]
School Turnarounds: How Successful Principals Use Teacher Leadership
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 […]
Opportunity Culture Voices: Why All Schools Need Multi-Classroom Leadership
“When I was asked to be on my school’s design team for a new initiative, I had no idea what I was getting into. I heard it would help build relationships with students and the community, and improve learning, so I thought, ‘Cool. I’m in. That is right up my alley.’ But this wasn’t any […]
New Models Combine Teacher Leadership, Digital Learning
Teachers using blended learning need guidance to help students achieve high-growth learning consistently. Teacher-leaders and their teams need time to collaborate and learn together on the job. Students need access to personalized instruction that catalyzes consistently high growth and expands their thinking. How can schools achieve all of these goals? Combine blended learning with teacher […]
New Models Combine Teacher Leadership, Digital Learning
Teachers using blended learning need guidance to help students achieve high-growth learning consistently. Teacher-leaders and their teams need time to collaborate and learn together on the job. Students need access to personalized instruction that catalyzes consistently high growth and expands their thinking. How can schools achieve all of these goals? Combine blended learning with teacher […]
Launching Paid Teacher Leadership with Union-District Partnership
How could a large number of well-paid teacher-leader roles emerge in a unionized district? This question is at the top of the list for many superintendents.
Syracuse, N.Y., educators have some advice, captured in a new three-page vignette, How One Union-District Partnership Launched an Opportunity Culture. Syracuse union and district leaders discuss their experiences and lessons they learned about working together for a successful launch.
In late 2013, the Syracuse City School District became the nation’s first unionized district to use Opportunity Culture, with four of its highest-need schools choosing and tailoring models to fit. They began to implement their new teacher-leader roles using the Multi-Classroom Leadership model in 2014–15, and are now expanding the roles to many more schools. Multi-classroom leaders—several per school—earn a $12,000 supplement in Syracuse for leading teams and helping their colleagues succeed, while continuing to teach.
Opportunity Culture models extend the reach of teachers who excel with students to more students, directly and by leading other teachers, for much higher pay funded by reallocating existing budgets. Teachers gain planning and collaboration time, and teachers in advanced roles are responsible for the outcomes of all the students they serve—as well as for the support, development, and success of their colleagues when they work in teams. In nearly all cases, instructional group sizes remain the same or even smaller.
The strongest advice from Syracuse on launching an Opportunity Culture? Both union leaders and a former administrator say: Get the union involved from the very beginning, and keep it involved at every step of the way.