Better-prepared new teachers, more adults in every classroom, more small-group instruction, more adults caring for every student—how can a school wrap all that up in one package? Three Metropolitan Nashville Opportunity Culture® schools are trying a novel approach...
recruitment and retention
Opportunity Culture® Principals: “People Want to Be a Part of This”
Now, it’s the principals’ turn: We’ve shared videos of multi-classroom leaders and team teachers telling why they love their jobs in the Metro Nashville schools that have created an Opportunity Culture. Hear why the principals at Bailey STEM Magnet Middle School and Buena Vista Elementary call an Opportunity Culture “sustainable,” “innovative,” and the “it factor” in changing the game for students and teachers. These principals’ schools use multi-classroom leadership, setting up the feedback loops from team teaching, collaboration, and teacher-leadership that they and their teachers revel in.
“Absolutely the most powerful benefit is student achievement”
“You make sure that every single child is in a top-quality classroom”
“Teachers are applying at newfound rates to be a part of this work”
And watch this blog! We’ll have more videos to come in 2015 from other Opportunity Culture sites, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Cabarrus County, N.C., and Syracuse, N.Y.
Team Teachers Tell All! Why Opportunity Culture® Teams Work
Before Thanksgiving, we shared this video of Metro Nashville multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) telling why they love what they do; now, hear their team teachers share why they love working on MCL teams in an Opportunity Culture! Lead teachers at Buena Vista Elementary serve on MCL teams with “aspiring teachers” who work in yearlong, paid student teaching positions. As you’ll hear, they get the sort of daily, immediately useful, on-the-job feedback and collaboration that teachers say they crave, and that is a hallmark of Opportunity Culture school models (see the Opportunity Culture Principles). “Invaluable,” “amazing,” “really resourceful,” the teachers say–see why!
Coming Wednesday: Opportunity Culture principals tell why an Opportunity Culture is “the new frontier” for all schools.
Giving thanks for Opportunity Culture® Multi-Classroom Leaders
Need more to be thankful for this year? Add these committed, enthusiastic, deeply determined teacher-leaders to your list! I recently interviewed multi-classroom leaders in in three Metro Nashville schools that use Opportunity Culture models. Videographer Beverley Tyndall and I couldn’t wait to share at least a few bits of these inspiring interviews, and we’ll soon be posting more videos from Opportunity Culture team teachers and principals–for whom we’re also quite thankful! For now, enjoy hearing just a bit about why these teacher-leaders love what they do!
How the STEM Teacher Shortage Fails Kids–and How to Fix It
In the U.S., STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) get a lot of press lately. But it’s still hard for leaders to connect the dots: Too few skilled STEM teachers lead to too few students embracing STEM subjects, leading to too few STEM-trained workers to fill available jobs. The consequences for students-turned-job-seekers, businesses, and the U.S. economy—where STEM jobs are an economic growth multiplier—are enormous.
The statistics are grim. In Reaching All Students with Excellent STEM Teachers: Education Leaders’ Brief and the accompanying slide deck, Public Impact lays them out and then explains how Opportunity Culture school models can help. These models extend teachers’ reach to more students, for more pay, within budget, by saving teachers time and letting them lead peers while teaching in new career paths.
This report is part of Public Impact’s commitment to 100Kin10, a national network of more than 150 partners responding to the national imperative to train 100,000 excellent STEM teachers in 10 years and keep our best STEM teachers in the classroom.
“Many of 100Kin10’s partners focus on changing the opportunities and support available to STEM teachers,” says Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director and co-founder of 100Kin10. “Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture effort to extend the reach of excellent teachers and pay them far more is a powerful way to address teacher shortages and retention challenges.”
Who needs this new brief and slide deck?
- District leaders—to learn how to improve your STEM efforts
- Teachers—to support your advocacy for meaningful professional learning and advancement
- Teacher-prep programs—to grasp how grim things are,and steer aspiring STEM teachers toward districts offering better career opportunities
- State policymakers—to grasp why tinkering at the edges of traditional school models isn’t enough, and how policies can make an Opportunity Culture schools feasible statewide
- Business leaders—to understand the root of the STEM employee shortage, and to learn what education reforms will help close the gaps
- Reporters—to understand the background statistics and ways of addressing the STEM shortage
Opportunity Culture pilot schools are already attracting far more STEM teachers, by extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for significantly higher pay, within regular budgets. Early implementers received 30 applications for each open position, even in high-poverty schools that could not fill positions previously. Those are teachers who otherwise might be tempted away by the higher pay and multiple advancement opportunities of other STEM careers.
In an Opportunity Culture, students can experience consistent access to excellent STEM teaching. Great teachers can stay in the classroom while they advance. They lead teams on the job with clear authority and time to plan and collaborate, specialize in their best subjects, or use age-appropriate amounts of digital instruction, without having to increase class sizes.
Excellent STEM teachers in Opportunity Culture schools are already earning 10 to 50 percent pay supplements from within their schools’ regular budgets, not temporary grants.
5 Steps to Design Highly Paid Teacher Career Paths
To help all students reach their potential, district leaders must ensure that every student has consistent access to excellent teaching. Opportunity Culture compensation and career path structures help make that possible, and the new guide out today from Public Impact shows how.
Teacher Pay and Career Paths in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Policy Guide shows how districts can design teacher career paths that will keep excellent teachers in the classroom and extend their reach to more students, for more pay, within budget. When districts design these paths, they create opportunities:
- for excellent teachers to reach more students directly and by leading teaching teams,
- for solid teachers to contribute to excellence immediately, and
- for all teachers to receive the support and development they deserve.
The full guide walks a district through the organizing steps and details of designing Opportunity Culture pay and career paths that fit its needs and values. It includes an overview of key Opportunity Culture concepts, graphics and explanations detailing new school models and roles, and assistance for evaluating the impact of different compensation design choices. The steps guide districts to ensuring financial sustainability and designing a complete career lattice.
The summary provides a brief overview and graphics that show how pay and career paths work at a glance.
Doing the Math on Opportunity Culture®’s Early Impact
As we’ve noted in previous posts, schools continue to join the Opportunity Culture initiative, eager to work with teachers on redesigning their teaching roles and career paths. As the first year of implementation in Opportunity Culture pilot schools wound down, we looked at the impact of just the 31 leading-edge schools who had joined the initiative by April. (Six more high schools joined in May but are not included in these figures, as they hadn’t yet had a chance to make their Opportunity Culture plans).
What can we project for these 31 schools by the time they implement their models fully, over three years?
* About 15,000 students reached consistently by excellent teachers and their excellence-focused teams each year
* About 450 teachers earning far more in new roles that let teachers focus on what they do best, learn from excellent teacher-leaders, and advance without leaving the classroom**
* Almost $4 million in extra teacher pay annually in just these 31 implementing schools
* About 80,000 new, additional hours total for planning, collaboration, and on-the-job learning during school hours annually—180 more hours per teacher, per year
* About $290,000 to $900,000 in additional lifetime pay, in current dollars, per teacher (this number will be more than $1 million as some schools implement wider-span teacher-leader roles)
* About $130 million total additional pay if all 450 teachers (or others like them) remain in these uniquely financially sustainable career advancement models for 35 years. Within budget.
See more below. And see Projected Statewide Impact of “Opportunity Culture” School Models to see how an Opportunity Culture can affect a state’s economy as well—to the tune of billions of dollars in state domestic product increases.
These are the numbers for just 31 schools. Imagine the numbers when a whole nation has schools in which teachers lead, learn on the job, help more students excel, and get paid for it—forever.
Opportunity Culture® Schools: Showing N.C. How to Keep Teachers
For these CMS teachers, change doesn’t mean exodus: In Friday’s Charlotte Observer, reporter Ann Doss Helms checked back in with Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) teachers who’d been in the news in the past year over their frustrations–reflected across North Carolina classrooms–with teacher pay turmoil in the state. Helms wrote:
After a year of frustration with low pay and challenging conditions, teachers Marie Calabro, Dave Hartzell and Justin Ashley have packed their boxes and left their jobs.
Despite talk of a teacher exodus from North Carolina, though, these three aren’t leaving the state–or even Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Calabro, who organized sidewalk rallies for teachers, and Hartzell, featured in an Observer article on teacher pay, both switched schools to take higher-paying “opportunity culture” jobs that keep them in classrooms. The House and governor’s budget plans call for expanding that approach, which CMS is pioneering.
The article gives a glimpse of Public Impact’s long-term vision for our Opportunity Culture work–that an Opportunity Culture’s sustainably funded, higher-paid teaching and career opportunities will change who enters teaching, who stays, and how much more impact excellent teachers can have in their careers. Allowing great teachers to reach more students can kick-start the virtuous cycle of selectivity, opportunity, and higher pay.
Pilot schools already saw one effect of an Opportunity Culture on the front end of their implementation, as they were flooded with applications for the new positions; CMS now can see the beginnings of another effect, in keeping its great teachers from leaving the state for a higher-paid teaching job.
As Helms wrote about teacher Dave Hartzell:
N&O Editor Calls Opportunity Culture® Solution a “Symphony”
Calling school models in an Opportunity Culture a simple, harmonious solution, Editorial Page Editor of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer highlighted the work of Public Impact and Co-Directors Bryan and EmilyAyscue Hassel in his column yesterday.
In Let NC’s top teachers teach—and earn—more, Barnett said:
“With all the angst and alarm over the General Assembly’s approach to K-12 education, hearing Bryan Hassel talk about how to create more effective schools is like listening to a symphony. He has a solution. It’s simple and harmonious and won’t cost more than we should be spending anyway.“
Embracing the Opportunity Culture concept—which extends the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within regular budgets—Barnett noted:
“The Hassels’ approach would not be cheap at first for North Carolina. They say the state needs to raise its average teacher pay 10 percent or more to reverse the backsliding that has sent the average pay sliding to 48th in the nation. But after that, schools could reallocate funds between extra support staff and great teachers teaching more students without increasing school district budgets.
Compare the teacher response to the Charlotte experiment with the statewide situation in North Carolina. While teacher applications piled up for the Charlotte pilot schools, low pay and low morale statewide are fueling an exodus and a looming teacher shortage.”
As North Carolina grapples with this, the governor has proposed sustainable career pathways that districts and their teachers can design. The Senate proposed large average base pay increases. We at Public Impact hope that now the state House, Senate, and governor can work together to bring both of these to reality, and fund education at a level that lets North Carolina ensure a competitive workforce and robust economy.
As Barnett concluded:
“The General Assembly and the governor are responding by offering a boost in pay. Hassel says that helps, but it’s only paying good and bad teachers more to do the same job. What should happen is more pay for good teachers and a winnowing of low performers.
In addition, Bryan Hassel says, the state should be adding teacher assistants, not cutting them by half as proposed in the state Senate’s budget. The teaching profession is virtually alone, he notes, in asking teachers to work in isolation doing many tasks involving a range of skills. Why have great teachers sidelined to tend to sick or unruly students or to monitor cafeterias and bus lines?
North Carolina is in an educational crisis and if it continues the state will lose many excellent teachers. It’s time to support top teachers by making a substantial change in how they are employed and what they can earn.”
Courage Gap? Action Gap? Not at These Schools
At the Education Writers Association conference in Nashville on Tuesday, I listened to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan reiterate his belief that “education is the civil rights issue of our generation.”
On that, we at Public Impact couldn’t agree more.
He also talked about the outrage over our nation’s achievement gaps and worries about opportunity gaps. The country has, he said, a “courage gap” and an “action gap.”
We’d like to direct his attention to some teachers and leaders showing both courage and action.
In Opportunity Culture pilot schools, teachers are taking action, redesigning their schools to extend the reach of great teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within current budgets. Their leaders are showing courage by finding ways to make these redesigns possible within state rules and tight budgets. Creating Opportunity Culture schools means letting go of traditional one-teacher-one-classroom mindsets—and opening the door to career paths that let great teachers lead while continuing to teach, to opportunities for great teachers to reach more students directly with their inspiring instruction, and to opportunities for all students—not just a lucky few—to get excellent teaching, consistently, from teachers who get the pay and respect they deserve.
Where are those schools? Several were right under Duncan’s nose yesterday—in the iZone in Nashville. Schools in Cabarrus County, N.C., and Syracuse, N.Y., plan to implement their own Opportunity Cultures this fall. And in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS), four schools participated in the pilot this year—to be joined by 17 more this fall, and by nearly half the schools in the district by 2017–18.
The pilot schools’ learning results will start rolling in this summer, with more robust data from more than 30 schools nationwide next year. But CMS Superintendent Heath Morrison saw one significant result already that led to his January decision to scale up from those first four pilots: Enthusiastic teachers, in a state where teacher enthusiasm may be at an all-time low. The pilot schools were swamped last year with applications for these Opportunity Culture jobs, even in high-poverty schools. Despite the hard work of implementing something completely new, teachers’ enthusiasm continues (see what they’re saying here).
What makes an Opportunity Culture different enough to resonate so profoundly with teachers and district leaders?