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.
“Opportunity Culture continues to grow and thrive, making clear differences in the lives of many more students and teachers. Public Impact applauds schools and districts for having strong teaching teams and leaders who are guiding the transition to at-home learning,” said Lucy Steiner, senior vice president for educator excellence and implementation services.
Public Impact analyzes the dashboard annually to improve materials and our work with Opportunity Culture schools and districts. Our goals include reaching all students with high-growth learning, reaching 50 percent more schools on average with Opportunity Culture roles each year, and making changes that educators love due to the increased opportunities and support they receive. In the seventh year of schools implementing the Opportunity Culture teaching roles, higher pay, and increased teacher support, here are the 2019–20 highlights:
- 360+ schools committed to Opportunity Culture
- 2,600+ teachers with advanced roles or on-the-job development
- 67,000+ students reached by excellent teachers extending their reach
- $5.9 million in extra pay for teachers in 2019–20; $20.6 million since Opportunity Culture began
- 37 Opportunity Culture sites in 10 states—and growing
- Strong educator support: 99% of surveyed multi-classroom leaders & 88% of all teachers & staff in Opportunity Culture roles want Opportunity Culture to continue in their schools
- High growth by teachers on multi-classroom leaders’ teams: 2018 study shows team math gains rose from 50th percentile of teachers to 75th–85th, reading from 50th percentile of teachers to 66th–72nd
- Longitudinal data show schools are more likely to make high growth with each passing year. In the fourth year of implementation, Opportunity Culture schools are more than 50 percent more likely to make high growth than other schools
Detailed statistics from 2019–20
Click on the dashboard image to see complete results.
Schools: 207 schools are now implementing Opportunity Culture, up from seven schools when the initiative began in 2013–14; 92 more schools have begun planning for implementation in 2020–21. States and districts have committed to launch Opportunity Culture in 64 other schools in the next few years. Schools, cities, and states continue to join.
Sites: Ten states now have a total of 37 Opportunity Culture sites, with a mix of urban, suburban, and rural schools.
Students—More than 67,000 students were reached in 2019–20 by one or more Opportunity Culture teachers. Nothing matters more for students than getting excellent teaching consistently: Excellent teachers help students learn more, and when they serve as multi-classroom leaders, they help other teachers produce higher-growth student learning, too. Research also says that teachers producing high growth develop students’ higher-order thinking skills.
Teaching Roles—2019–20 saw 700 teachers in advanced roles and 1,968 teachers receiving on-the-job development on teacher-led teams. Advanced Opportunity Culture roles are reserved for teachers with a track record of high-growth student learning. Team teacher roles are held by teachers with a typical range of prior effectiveness. Before 2017–18, schools designing Opportunity Culture used a variety of roles to extend teachers’ reach. All schools designing Opportunity Culture implementation plans since 2018 use Multi-Classroom Leadership, embedding other roles within multi-classroom leaders’ small teams.
Teachers—In anonymous surveys conducted in spring 2019, 99 percent of multi-classroom leaders and 88 percent of all those in Opportunity Culture roles said they want Opportunity Culture to continue in their schools. See the dashboard for more educator perceptions.
Pay—$5.9 million was reallocated to higher teacher pay in 2019–20; $20.6 million has been reallocated to higher pay since Opportunity Culture began in 2013. Pay supplements for MCLs went as high as $20,000, with an average of $11,492, or 21 percent of the average teacher salary in Opportunity Culture states. Opportunity Culture supplements for all teachers ranged from $1,000 to $20,000. School design teams that include teachers make budget reallocation decisions.
Student Results—A 2018 study from the American Institutes of Research and the Brookings Institution showed that students in classrooms of team teachers led by MCLs showed sizeable academic gains. The team teachers in the study were, on average, at the 50th percentile in the student learning gains they produced before joining a team led by an MCL. After joining the teams, they produced learning gains equivalent to those of teachers in the top quartile in math and nearly that in reading. Public Impact’s latest analysis indicates that high-growth student learning schoolwide goes up with each year of implementation, on average, when excellent teachers reach a higher percentage of students each year. By the fourth year, nearly 75 percent of students are reached by teachers who have a record of prior high student learning growth, on average, and the percentage of schools making schoolwide high growth is 50 percent higher than for schools without Opportunity Culture. If schools let reach decline after that (for example, after principal turnover), they may lose gains in schoolwide growth.