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Beverley Tyndall

In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture®

January 30, 2015

New Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) Superintendent Ann Clark highlighted the district’s Opportunity Culture career paths in her “State of our Schools” speech Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Discussing the need to be competitive on teacher pay to retain teachers, Clark pointed out how an Opportunity Culture helps great teachers stay in the classroom while making much more money, using such models as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps. Pay supplements for multi-classroom leaders can be as much as $23,000, or 50 percent more than average teacher pay in North Carolina, for example–within current school budgets.

Shortly into the first year of Opportunity Culture implementation in four schools, the district’s top leaders, including Clark, were so pleased that they decided to dramatically scale it up to reach nearly half the schools in the district by 2017-18. Now in their second year, those four schools were joined by 17 more, with up to eight more joining next year.

How 2 High-Poverty Schools Planned an Opportunity Culture® Overhaul

January 29, 2015

High-need schools. Lagging student performance. Teacher churn. “We’ve tried everything.” For many school principals, this may sound unpleasantly familiar.

At two Charlotte schools, though, the principals found something they hadn’t tried: creating an Opportunity Culture for their students and teachers.

By extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students—for much higher pay,within available budgets, and adding time to plan, collaborate, and improve—the schools saw a way to address their dilemmas using the Opportunity Culture formula. By involving teachers at each school from the start in choosing how to extend teachers’ reach and pay more, they improved teachers’ morale, recruited more great teachers, and kept them.

“Opportunity Culture spoke to me,” says Alison Harris, principal of Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, in a new case study. When Harris arrived at Ranson in 2011, it was a school in trouble, unable to recruit and retain enough teachers for its struggling students.

“In the 2011–2012 school year, I just made it clear that we’ve got to do something to help our scholars catch up,” Harris says in an accompanying video. “They are already coming to us behind—it is no one’s fault, but it is everyone’s responsibility. … For many of our scholars, it is truly life and death whether or not they get a great education in middle school.”

Nearby, Tonya Kales and Jeanette Reber at Ashley Park PreK–8 felt similar concerns about getting their students a great education. At both schools, the principals and school teams that included teachers chose to use new Opportunity Culture teaching roles—Multi-Classroom Leadership for teacher-leaders, and Time-Technology Swaps, which blend learning through in-person and online instruction.

Those roles and the support for teachers, time for collaboration, and paid career advancement options they offer would, Reber says in another new case study, help Ashley Park attract and keep teachers and further boost her students’ learning.

In Multi-Classroom Leadership, excellent teachers continue to teach while leading, supporting, and developing a team of teachers. “Teachers don’t always want to leave the classroom,” Reber says in the video. “They don’t always want to get far removed from being directly involved with scholars. So Opportunity Culture was the perfect thing for these teachers who want to stay connected with the kids and grow themselves.”

After settling on the new roles, Ranson and Ashley Park began the multiyear process of introducing, implementing, and adjusting their models.

Ashley Park PreK-8 Case Study

January 28, 2015

This case study addresses why Ashley Park chose to implement an Opportunity Culture using Multi-Classroom Leadership and blended learning through a Time-Technology Swap, and how the early days of implementation helped the school retain its best teachers.

Ranson IB Middle School Case Study

January 28, 2015

This case study looks at the early days of Ranson’s implementation of two Opportunity Culture job models—Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps—and how an Opportunity Culture improved its recruitment and retention of great teachers.

Ranson and Ashley Park Choose an Opportunity Culture®

January 28, 2015

Principals at Ashley Park PreK-8 and Ranson IB Middle in Charlotte tell why they chose to create an Opportunity Culture® in their schools, working with teachers to choose new job models that would suit their schools best—and how an Opportunity Culture® helps them...

An Opportunity Culture® for Teaching and Learning

January 26, 2015

To understand an Opportunity Culture, start here: For excellent teachers and those aspiring to excellence, and for administrative or education policy leaders, this brief provides an overview of how an Opportunity Culture can help teachers have the well-paid, empowered profession they deserve—while helping many more students succeed.

Recruit Great Teachers with Great Opportunities, 4 Key Steps

January 15, 2015

What brings excellent teachers in droves to apply for jobs in hard-to-staff schools? Project L.I.F.T. in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District started by offering a complete Opportunity Culture package of career advancement roles that let great teachers stay in the classroom, help more students, and collaborate with and lead peers. These roles provide significantly higher pay and offer on-the-job development to all teachers–within regular school budgets. With that package on offer, four key recruitment steps got teachers’ attention.

And so, in its second year of Opportunity Culture implementation in four schools, Project L.I.F.T. saw a strong uptick in both the quantity–more than 800 applications for 27 spots–and quality of applicants for teaching roles at schools that previously saw many positions go unfilled.

Dan Swartz, L.I.F.T.’s human capital strategies specialist, and L.I.F.T. Superintendent Denise Watts explain how they got there in a new vignette from Public Impact, Recruiting in an Opportunity Culture: Lessons Learned, with an accompanying video of principals and district leaders sharing how an Opportunity Culture attracts great teachers.

  • First, Swartz says, start early—by March, if not earlier, before the best teachers find jobs elsewhere.
  • Second, communicate clearly about the benefits—A complete package of sustainable career advancement opportunities is rare in education, and teachers won’t expect it. Districts must communicate the whole picture of opportunities, support, and pay.

Recruiting in an Opportunity Culture®

January 15, 2015

District leaders and principals from Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Project L.I.F.T. schools share thoughts on how an Opportunity Culture® is attracting teachers to previously hard-to-staff schools. The video features interviews with, in order of appearance: Dan Swartz,...

Nashville Team Teachers in an Opportunity Culture®

January 15, 2015

Teachers on multi-classroom leader teams in Metro Nashville Opportunity Culture® schools tell why they love their collaborative teams. This video features interviews with the following teachers from Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary School, in order of...

Nashville Principals in an Opportunity Culture®

January 15, 2015

Hear principals of two Opportunity Culture® schools in Metro Nashville discuss why an Opportunity Culture® is the “it factor” in changing the game for teachers and students, especially in high-need schools, in video from Public Impact®’s Opportunity Culture®...