The Opportunity Culture® Principles
Five keys to sustainable, scalable instructional excellence with results—for all
The Opportunity Culture® principles help schools ensure that roles extending the reach of excellent teachers and principals to far more students, and to their colleagues, are sustainable and effective.
The principles for teachers and for principals are very similar; additional guidance for each type can be found here.
To learn more, read the two-page guide:
Understanding the Opportunity Culture® Principles
The Opportunity Culture® Principles for Teachers Extending Their Reach
Teams of teachers & school leaders must choose and tailor models to:
Reach more students with excellent teachers and their teams
Pay teachers more for extending their reach
Fund pay within regular budgets
Provide protected in-school time and clarity about how to use it for planning, collaboration, and development
Match authority and accountability to each person’s responsibilities
The Opportunity Culture® Principles for Principals Extending Their Reach as Multi-School Leaders
Teams of principals and district/network leaders must choose and tailor models to:
Reach more students with excellent principals and their teams
Pay principals more for extending their reach
Fund pay within regular budgets
Provide protected in-school time and clarity about how to use it for planning, collaboration, and development
—within and across the schools each leader leads
Match authority and accountability to each person’s responsibilities
Public Impact® developed these principles in 2011 in response to decades of failed efforts to create high-quality advanced roles for teachers and principals. Schools began using them in 2012, leading to refinements based on their early implementation of Opportunity Culture® staffing and instructional design. Third-party research shows the efficacy of this design and the Multi-Classroom Leader® role: Students gain nearly an extra half-year of learning per year, on average, and schools see two to three times the rate of schoolwide high growth when meeting design standards.
The principles support one another. New roles that allow educators to extend their reach—taking on far more instructional responsibility—should pay more. Higher pay must be funded with regular budgets, not temporary sources, so that advanced roles last. Roles that require taking on instructional responsibility for more students or teachers must include more time for instructional planning, team collaboration to review student data and adjust lessons, and on-the-job observation and coaching. And greater responsibility should be formalized, so that evaluations match each advanced role, and colleagues know who has authority to lead instruction day to day.
Don’t take shortcuts. Experience has shown that following each and every principle, in letter and spirit, is the only way for schools to achieve excellence consistently and sustainably. Delaying full implementation of any principle reduces student learning, makes teachers’ jobs harder, and creates problems that must be fixed later.