Dramatic Student Growth Follows Focus on Data, Small-Group Tutoring, and Collaboration

Principal April Shackleford, back right, reviews student reading data with her third-grade teaching team.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!


Lucama Elementary, a rural, Title I school in Wilson County, North Carolina, implemented several Opportunity Culture® roles in 2021–22. Following a focus on data-driven, small-group tutoring, instruction based on the science of reading, and greater educator collaboration through Multi-Classroom Leader® teams, the school dramatically increased student learning growth. Principal April Shackleford and Lucama educators explain their success, and why it led them in 2022 to expand to schoolwide Opportunity Culture® roles.

Dramatic Student Growth Follows Focus on Data, Small-Group Tutoring, and Collaboration

Related Links

Transcript: Dramatic Student Growth Follows Focus on Data, Small-Group Tutoring, and Collaboration

Video: Using Opportunity Culture® Roles to Support Science of Reading-Based Instruction

Blog Post: Harness the Power of Small-Group Tutoring with Opportunity Culture® Staffing

Follow Us on LinkedIn!

Keep Learning

PA Needs Teachers—and Needs Them to Stay

“Educators are deeply committed to students, but the job itself has increasingly become difficult to sustain.”—Jill Weller-Reilly, Teach Plus Pennsylvania senior policy fellow/2024 Policy Fellow of the Year When a coalition came together to form PA Needs Teachers in...

When Districts Share Staff, Students and Teachers Win

When Rockingham County Schools, a rural North Carolina district, needed a teaching team leader with a record of high-growth learning for high school math, it faced a dilemma many rural areas confront: no candidate was available who had that record of learning growth...

In Mississippi, Responding to a Teacher Retention Crisis

Left to right: Grace Braezeale and Angela Bass of Mississippi First; Sanford Johnson and Sharon Buckhanan of Teach Plus Mississippi. In recent months, both Mississippi First and Teach Plus Mississippi have issued reports advocating for bold legislative action that...