Portal Login

What’s Happening

Opportunity Culture® News and Views

How to Build an Opportunity Culture®: New, Free Toolkit

by | June 9, 2015

Extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within available budgets. Provide much more on-the-job, school-day collaboration, planning time, and support to teachers. When a district decides it wants to do this, then what?

Big changes demand big help, and we’ve just released our free Opportunity Culture Toolkit, which walks districts and schools through all the phases of building an Opportunity Culture. In an Opportunity Culture, great teachers and the teams they lead extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget and without forcing class-size increases. It’s happening now, in districts as diverse as Syracuse, N.Y., and Big Spring, Texas, and we’ve used lessons from all the Opportunity Culture districts in building the kit.

This toolkit will help leaders of districts, schools, and charter management organizations engage their boards, central staff, school leaders, and teachers in developing, implementing, and refining an Opportunity Culture in their schools. Partners helping education leaders with organizing, school design, technology, or other elements of the change process will also find this valuable.

From making the initial district commitment to making district- and school-level decisions, implementing an Opportunity Culture, and evaluating and refining it, the Opportunity Culture Toolkit shows users how it’s done, with multiple tools for each of the seven steps along the way.

The kit begins with an overview–an introduction to an Opportunity Culture and the school models and career paths at its foundation. The rest is organized into the key design and implementation phases, with related tools for each. Each phase includes a set of objectives, detailed action steps for accomplishing the objectives, and links to relevant tools and resources.

New and updated tools are added regularly, based on Public Impact’s work with leading districts nationally that are implementing an Opportunity Culture. The first Opportunity Culture schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Nashville, Tenn., have been joined so far by many more Charlotte schools, the schools in Syracuse and Big Spring, and schools in Cabarrus County, N.C., and Indianapolis, Ind. The Texas Education Agency has announced that it will be choosing additional Texas districts in the coming year. Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative in 2011. See “Where is this happening?” on our revamped website for more information.

How to Hire Great Teachers and Teacher-Leaders: Free Toolkits

by | June 2, 2015

In an Opportunity Culture, districts and schools offer new roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets and without forcing class-size increases. The new roles put districts in a much stronger position to hire great teachers—but only if they recruit and select well.

We’ve posted two new toolkits to make that work easier, walking human resources officers and principals through the steps to great hiring, informed by the experiences of early Opportunity Culture districts. These tools are useful for any district hiring teacher-leaders, team teachers, blended-learning teachers, elementary subject specialists, and advanced paraprofessional support—not just Opportunity Culture positions.

The Recruitment Toolkit, downloadable as a PDF, walks districts and schools through the major steps of a successful recruiting effort. It explains why districts that rely on passive strategies—expecting candidates to find out about available positions and apply—will not get the recruitment results they want.

The toolkit addresses key details, such as the timing of recruitment, which ideally begins each year no later than March, to attract a large pool of excellent candidates and capture their interest before they commit to other jobs. Strong recruitment enables districts to attract great candidates regionally, even nationally, who could be a perfect fit for Opportunity Culture or similar roles—including those not actively seeking a new job.

Once schools and districts have a pool of great candidates, what next?

The Teacher and Staff Selection Toolkit provides a four-step guide to help districts and schools select teachers and staff members from competitive talent pools. Districts that have created an Opportunity Culture have seen a surge of applications, even in high-poverty schools. This toolkit helps leaders adapt to a higher volume of applications and the opportunity that volume offers to become very selective in hiring.

The selection kit helps leaders screen and prioritize candidates for these new roles, which require new behaviors and skills beyond those needed in a one-teacher-one-classroom setting. Each step includes a set of considerations, action steps, and links to relevant tools and resources.

Texas Launches Statewide Opportunity Culture® Initiative

by | May 19, 2015

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has made Texas the first state to support multiple districts in creating an Opportunity Culture, joining the national initiative designed to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets.

The Big Spring Independent School District, an eight-campus district in a town of about 28,000 people in west Texas, is recruiting for its first year of implementation in the 2015–16 school year, and the TEA is identifying additional districts to support in this work.

Big Spring is leading the way for small cities and towns in Texas and across the country to adopt Opportunity Culture models. These models use job redesign and age-appropriate technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget.

Opportunity Culture teachers typically work in collaborative teams led by excellent teachers. Teams have in-school planning and collaboration time together and are formally accountable for all of the students they reach. Teachers in Opportunity Culture districts in Tennessee, North Carolina, and New York are earning pay supplements as high as 50 percent of their state’s average teacher pay.

”Texas is committed to providing pathways for advancement and recognition for our best teachers,” said Texas Commissioner of Education Michael Williams. “Through our support of Opportunity Culture at the state level, our goal is to quantify success in districts by working collaboratively with teachers and principals to support greater student achievement for all students.”

Public Impact, which designed the Opportunity Culture model prototypes, and Education First, which has extensive experience facilitating collaborative change in district schools, will assist the state’s 20 Education Service Centers (ESCs) and the TEA in identifying and supporting the districts.

Four Big Spring ISD elementary schools—Goliad, Marcy, Moss, and Washington—will select multi-classroom leaders to lead teams of teachers, which are supported by paraprofessional “reach associates,” at their schools. Multi-classroom leaders continue to teach while leading a team, taking formal accountability for the learning results of all the students the team serves. Each school has a design team of administrators and teachers that is adapting the multi-classroom model and planning implementation details to fit their needs, following the five Opportunity Culture Principles.

“We see Opportunity Culture as a way a small West Texas district like ours can make great strides,” Big Spring Superintendent Chris Wigington said. “By supporting great educators with on the job training and leadership opportunities, we can create teams and grow our teachers’ practice to make a difference for all of our students.”

Looking for an Opportunity Culture® Job?

by | May 18, 2015

Are you intrigued by all you’ve read and heard about an Opportunity Culture?

Interested in extending your reach to more students, for more pay?

Ready to lead from within, sharing your great teaching without leaving the classroom by leading a team, for significantly higher pay?

Are you a new teacher interested in all the support an Opportunity Culture has to offer?

Or do you know teachers who deserve the respect, support, career advancement possibilities, and higher pay that an Opportunity Culture could offer them?

Find Opportunity Culture job postings from several districts here!

Learn more about what current Opportunity Culture teachers think here—multi-classroom leaders, blended-learning teachers, and team teachers discuss their jobs, and principals talk about the benefits of an Opportunity Culture and why they wanted this in their schools.

 

RealClearEducation.com Launches Opportunity Culture® Series

by | May 15, 2015

On RealClearEducation.com today, Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) Kristin Cubbage of Ashley Park Pre-K-8 in Charlotte, N.C., contrasts the support teachers get in an Opportunity Culture school to the support in typical schools—and issues a call to action to policymakers, administrators, and her fellow teachers:

“No school has enough administrators to coach every teacher. In a regular school, the average teacher receives three to five observations yearly. In an Opportunity Culture school, MCLs get to observe their teachers three to five times weekly. …

“How many teachers are out there struggling daily because of lack of support? How many burn out because they’ve tried all they know? How many leave our profession early because they can’t do it on their own any longer? How many kids suffer because they have access to only one teacher? How many students are falling more and more behind because they have zero control over their educational trajectory? We need a change; more important, our students deserve change.” —Kristin Cubbage

Cubbage kicks off a monthly series of posts by Opportunity Culture MCLs, blended-learning teachers, elementary school subject specialists, and principals. In addition to her call to action, she shares her initial response to Opportunity Culture:

“As I listened to administrators at [my school] describe coming changes, I knew in a flash that this new model would bring me my dream job. Asbhley Park would create an “Opportunity Culture” in the 2013­–14 academic year, in which high-performing teachers reach more students, for more pay, within current school budgets. One of the new job models in an Opportunity Culture is a “multi-classroom leader”—a teacher who continues to teach while leading a team of teachers, taking accountability for the results of all students served by the team, with plenty of school-day time for planning and collaboration— and much higher pay. … I knew that becoming an MCL, with accountability for multiple teachers and all their students, could be game-changing for teachers and students alike.”—Kristin Cubbage

Read her full column here; watch Kristin and others talk about their Opportunity Culture jobs here.

Get Inspired: Listen to Some Opportunity Culture® Teachers

by | May 14, 2015

Interviewing Opportunity Culture teachers and multi-classroom leaders recently in Charlotte and Cabarrus County, N.C., I got a little embarrassed. I never was much of a hard-bitten reporter, but still, I really shouldn’t start to cry at the teachers’ answers to my questions, should I?

But I teared up several times anyway, listening to them tell me how much their new Opportunity Culture roles meant to them, their students, and their school. Videographer Beverley Tyndall and I began taping these interviews eight months ago, asking all about the good, the bad, and the ugly of being Opportunity Culture pioneers. While teachers haven’t shied away from telling us what’s been tough as they work out initial implementation kinks, overwhelmingly, they tell us the good–or, more accurately, the really great.

You can see some of what they’ve told me in our Opportunity Culture Voices on Video collection. But since it will be a little while before we post more videos from these Charlotte and Cabarrus visits, I wanted to go ahead and share some of the thoughts of these multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) who lead a team of teachers; teachers using subject specialization for the first time in elementary school, teaching just one or two subjects to multiple groups of students; and teachers extending their reach to more students by using blended learning for the first time–plus a few of their students:

  • Mary Price, Rocky River Elementary, which is in its first year using Subject Specialization and Multi-Classroom Leadership. Price is the kindergarten reading teacher, on an MCL’s kindergarten team: “I’ve been teaching 22 years. This is the year that I can really focus on that one subject and all the children I’m teaching. I know what they need, and that’s what I’m focusing on. … I’ve never had so much support (as from the MCLs). … I’m not leaving this school, and I’ve told other people, you need to come here or go somewhere that has this program. It’s great for the children.”
  • Cyndal Brenneman, kindergarten and 1st grade MCL at Rocky River Elementary: “You make your teachers happy when you do (MCL) with specialization and when you give them more support. I have found that to be huge this year.”

Indianapolis District Lays Opportunity Culture® Groundwork

by | May 11, 2015

Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) is joining the Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of its excellent teachers and teams they lead to more students, for more pay, within budget. With the support of Public Impact, IPS will lay the groundwork by June for up to six schools to opt into piloting Opportunity Culture staffing models, to reach many more students with great teaching and create career paths for teachers to join teams, advance their careers, and lead peers without having to leave the classroom.

In an Opportunity Culture, teachers lead the way to change their schools. Opportunity Culture models use job redesign and age-appropriate technology to extend teachers’ reach. A school design team of teachers and administrators at each school selects and adapts the models to fit their school best. IPS pilot schools will create these teams over the summer, and they will work toward implementing the new models in the 2016–17 school year.

“We’re delighted to give our schools the opportunity to give all teachers the support, on-the-job learning, leadership opportunities, and higher pay they deserve,” said Superintendent Lewis Ferebee. “I want all students to benefit from excellent teaching.”

Support is a hallmark of Opportunity Culture schools. Teachers typically work in collaborative teams, with set-aside time during school hours for planning and developing their skills, along with frequent feedback from the teaching team leaders.

Pilot schools will receive help changing their schedules to make this set-aside time possible and developing an effective team process focused on excellent teaching. This team collaboration and teacher-led improvement provides a supportive environment for teachers to address student needs.

Op-Ed: N.C. Must Invest to Magnify Great Teachers’ Impact

by | May 11, 2015

“North Carolina will never make the educational strides it needs until the best educators have far greater impact for a lot more pay,” say Public Impact’s co-directors in an op-ed in Saturday’s Raleigh News and Observer.

Noting that the state’s General Assembly “rightfully added 6 percent focused primarily on early-career teachers’ base pay,” Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel point out that other states also increased salaries for teachers, and likely will again. So, they say, state leaders must complete the 10 percent average raise, and then some, just to stay on par in the region.

“Meanwhile, the pay gap with neighboring states yawns wider for experienced teachers,” the Hassels write. “Most importantly, base pay bumps for early-career teachers don’t empower or entice excellent teachers, many of whom are veterans, to lead from the classroom – reaching more students and helping peers excel.”

But North Carolina could change that, and lead the region in the process. They write:

What Makes an Opportunity Culture® Different?

by | March 31, 2015

When Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative, we were clear on the goal: reach as many students as possible with excellent teaching. As our team worked with teachers and principals, we committed to a second goal: provide outstanding, lasting, well-paid career opportunities to educators.

As researchers, we saw many pay and career path programs fall short of those goals–and still see too many today. Too often, pay programs fail to provide opportunities for teachers to learn from outstanding peers and others at work–to collaborate, plan with, and support one another. Too many new roles are funded with temporary or politically tenuous money. And very few pay or career path programs increase the number of students who have excellent teachers formally responsible for their learning.

So we embodied our goals and the guidance to achieve them in the five Opportunity Culture Principles. Those principles set Opportunity Culture schools apart from the other efforts.

Here’s a primer on what makes an Opportunity Culture different: