What’s Happening

State-level action and support is key to getting excellent teaching to many more students fast–and kids can’t wait. They need better learning, and for that, they need well-supported, well-paid teachers. As the leaders of Mississippi First and Teach Plus highlight in their reports, The Weight They Carry: Life as a Teacher in Mississippi and Reimagining School Staffing: Recommendations from Teach Plus MS Policy Fellows, Mississippi faces not a generic “teacher shortage” but a specific teacher retention crisis.

In our latest audio piece, Angela Bass, executive director of Mississippi First, Grace Braezeale, the director of research and K-12 policy who wrote Mississippi First’s report, Sanford Johnson, executive director of Teach Plus Mississippi, and Policy Fellow Sharon Buckhanan share what they hear from teachers throughout the state about the conditions leading to burnout and to great teachers leaving the profession altogether—and their hopes for how things could change for teachers, students, and parents if schools start using Opportunity Culture^® teaching teams, proven to increase student learning and provide job-embedded, in-depth support for teachers.

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It’s been a month of learning from several superintendents, who’ve come on the Opportunity Culture^® Audio podcast to share their thoughts about staffing design in their districts.

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“Asking teachers to be superheroes and be all things to all students is an insane job description,” writes Michael Horn. After having Bryan Hassel and Ashley Williams of Public Impact on his Future of Education podcast to talk about Opportunity Culture^® staffing design, Horn wrote, “The work Bryan and Ashley are doing speaks to a great solution—that also makes the job of teaching more motivating and viable.”

In Scaling the Transformation of the Traditional Teaching Model, Hassel and Williams discuss the power of teaching teams. In a LinkedIn post, Horn said the conversation left him with several takeaways, including that:

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The U.S. Department of Education recently released guidance encouraging states and school systems to use Title II and Title I funding (“Title funding”) to redesign schools for stronger learning and educator satisfaction using “strategic staffing.”

Opportunity Culture^® school designs are proven, evidence-based staffing designs that boost student learning by 2–13 months each school year—while increasing teacher satisfaction and reducing vacancies and turnover. Educators earn more long-term—within recurring budgets.

These staffing designs, created with teachers, have been rigorously researched and meticulously improved over nearly 15 years, using data about features that work best for students and educators. Dozens of options for small teaching teams led by excellent teachers offer schools design flexibility within data-based guardrails—to maximize learning while adjusting details to fit each school’s needs. Teams may include teacher residencies and apprenticeships as well as specialized roles, such as a special education team leader.

It's been a busy Opportunity Culture® week! From big research about student results in Texas to superintendents recognized for their impressive implementation to Title II options for funding redesign, the Opportunity Culture® initiative is making a splash. New...

With state funding in New Mexico and North Carolina and private funding in Oklahoma, 25 schools systems will join the national Opportunity Culture^® initiative in 2026, extending the reach of excellent teaching to more students, for more pay, within regular budgets. The initiative’s staffing designs have boosted student learning and reduced vacancies nationally.

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In a new report, The Weight They Carry: Life as a Teacher in Mississippi, education policy nonprofit Mississippi First recommends addressing the state’s ongoing teacher shortage in part by improving compensation through both an across-the-board pay increase and redesigned school staffing models that allow teachers to advance and receive substantial pay supplements without having to leave the classroom.

The report highlights Opportunity Culture^® models, which are in their first year of use in the Jackson, Mississippi, school district. Opportunity Culture^® design can help address the compensation pressures teachers face; Public Impact, which founded the Opportunity Culture^® initiative, has also consistently called for higher pay overall for educators. Collaborative Multi-Classroom Leader^® teams can also address some of the concerns teachers have about unmanageable workloads, and the distributed leadership inherent in schools using these teams both reduces the burden on principals and strengthens leadership pipelines.

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