At Public Impact®, we feel the “kids can’t wait” urgency—we know all kids deserve the learning results that our Opportunity Culture® strategic staffing models have been proven to produce. So we are taking steps to make our support for school systems more accessible. With a new online platform and certification process, schools and districts can spread the results to many more students and educators.
Read the first two posts in this series:
Because Kids Can’t Wait: Follow 5 Crucial Strategic Staffing Principles
Because Kids Can’t Wait: Use Proven Teaching Teams Throughout Schools and Districts
Over the past decade, sites in 13 states have used team roles that followed Opportunity Culture® principles to produce growth and satisfaction in students and educators. Research shows that students gain an extra half-year of learning each year, on average, when an educator in the Multi-Classroom Leader® role with prior high growth leads a teaching team with a variety of team role options. The odds of students making high-growth learning more than double when on these teams.
The teams also make it possible to create a tutoring culture, giving all students access to more small-group teaching and tutoring during the school day to further boost learning.
And educators express strong satisfaction, with 97% of teachers in the team leader role and 87% of all staff on the teams reporting in surveys that they would like this to continue in their schools, according to survey results.
Here are two big ways we aim to bring those results to many more districts and states.
The Opportunity Culture® portal
Our new online platform will launch in July. We developed the portal to put learning modules, design tools, and data at the fingertips of every educator in a district. The portal will serve as the foundation for our school staffing co-design services, which offer two options—“focused” and “intensive”—with Public Impact® consultants. For districts that want to go it mostly alone, the portal will be valuable for the “self-driven” option for design work, with the option of coaching add-ons. The portal will help districts go big, fast, to ensure that every student benefits from proven staffing design—because kids can’t wait.
Opportunity Culture® certification
This year, we will begin certifying schools, with levels that indicate greater alignment with staffing design characteristics associated with higher student learning results. Certification will help schools communicate to students, families, and their community about the strength of their instructional system, and attract educators looking for support and career paths that allow them to earn more without having to leave the classroom.. Schools can also use our feedback process to validate their certification status, offering another level of bragging rights for schools with the strongest designs.
We’re excited about all that schools using Opportunity Culture® models have achieved so far, and eager to continue with thoughtful innovation to further our mission to improve education dramatically for all students, especially low-income students, students of color, and other students whose needs historically have not been well met—because kids can’t wait.