By Public Impact, April 24, 2020
To understand how North Carolina’s 115 school districts are dealing with school closures, Public Impact and EducationNC joined forces to develop the NC District Response to COVID-19 School Closures Database. Read more about the database below, as well as an opinion piece on what the data tell us so far from Public Impact’s co-presidents. Read more…
From OA Online, April 16, 2020
The Education Foundation of Odessa announced Thursday that it has received a $500,000 grant from The Prentice Farrar Brown & Alline Ford Brown Foundation to support the implementation of Opportunity Culture in Ector County ISD beginning in the 2020-2021 academic year.
This grant will be payable over 36 months, a news release said.
ECISD and Midland ISD are introducing Opportunity Culture, an innovative approach to staffing that multiplies the impact of highly effective teachers, thereby improving student performance. Read the full article…
By Public Impact, April 10, 2020
As students and teachers shift to working from home, many district policies need to shift as well. In a publication released today, Recommended District Policies for At-Home Teaching and Learning, Public Impact provides recommendations with a focus on: What policies are both feasible and most likely to produce strong learning outcomes for all students, especially disadvantaged learners? Based on a review of policies of virtual schools and districts in response to COVID-19 and on Public Impact experience, these recommendations will be updated as districts, schools, and Public Impact continue to learn during the shift. We welcome your feedback. Read More…
By Public Impact, April 3, 2020
During this unprecedented crisis, the right schedules, along with videoconferencing, can help keep students and educators emotionally connected, while ensuring continued instructional excellence by teaching teams.
Public Impact has created new schedule examples for at-home learning, either full-day or half-day, for elementary and secondary school Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leader teams and their students. These materials will help schools provide students with face-to-face connections with each teacher and classmates, optimize use of other online learning, limit total screen time, and provide flexibility for when technology shortcomings and family disruptions affect students. Read more…
March 30, 2020, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.— Noting the ongoing, innovative work of Opportunity Culture educators who had little time to prepare for COVID-19 at-home teaching and learning, Public Impact, which created and leads the national Opportunity Culture initiative, has released the annual updates to its Opportunity Culture dashboard. Read the full press release…
By Public Impact, March 27, 2020
With little time to prepare for at-home teaching and learning, Opportunity Culture educators are bravely and innovatively doing what’s best for students.
We’re not surprised: Each year, we report the latest Opportunity Culture statistics in our online dashboard. Opportunity Culture—currently composed of 90 percent Title I-eligible schools—continues to expand Multi-Classroom Leadership, growing 50 percent annually, on average, and empowering well-paid multi-classroom leaders to help a wide range of teachers produce higher-growth learning. Read more…
From EducationNC, Marc 23, 2020, by Mebane Rash
Readers have been asking what multi-classroom leaders will do during coronavirus, wondering if those lessons could be more quickly scaled to other schools while everyone is experimenting with e-learning.
On March 20, our colleagues at Opportunity Culture, an initiative of Public Impact, released this slide deck via email. According to Opportunity Culture, multi-classroom leaders are “teachers with a record of high-growth student learning and leadership competencies” that “both teach part of the time and lead small, collaborative teams of two to eight teachers, paraprofessionals, and teacher residents in the same grade or subject.”
By Public Impact, March 20, 2020
How can Multi-Classroom Leadership work when both students and teachers are at home?
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new slide deck from Public Impact provides considerations and recommendations for Opportunity Culture schools to continue achieving high-growth student learning, developing students’ critical social-emotional skills, and providing strong support to teaching teams. Read more…
By Sharon Kebschull Barrett; first published by EducationNC, March 18, 2020
Can deep dives into large flows of student learning data actually lower teacher stress? Successful multi-classroom leaders, who lead small teaching teams in data analysis, say yes. When schools focus on small teams led by highly successful teachers, they help address the concerns North Carolina teachers expressed in a recent EdNC.org survey about professional development on using data and about having time to analyze and use data. Read more…
The spring 2020 edition of our newsletter for Opportunity Culture educators includes new and updated tools and resources for instructional excellence, a column by a Charlotte multi-classroom leader who was able to stay in the classroom due to Opportunity Culture, a slide deck on the benefits of Multi-Classroom Leadership + Team Reach, 5 Facts About Teacher Pay, and more. Read the spring 2020 newsletter here.