Portal
Shop

Opportunity Culture® Audio

For N.C. Superintendent, Opportunity Culture® Teams Lead to a “Return on Instructional Investment”

Superintendent Cindy Bennett meets with Vance County’s Casey Jackson, who leads the district’s Opportunity Culture® work.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

Since 2017, the Vance County, N.C., school system has used Opportunity Culture® teaching teams to improve teacher retention and student learning. How has the district sustained implementation through a pandemic and transition to a new superintendent? Superintendent Cindy Bennett discusses what the district values in the support these teams provide, and how it continues to learn and adjust its use of the model—with a focus on Aycock Elementary, now in year six of implementation and exceeding the state’s expectations for student learning growth.

For N.C. Superintendent, Opportunity Culture® Teams Lead to a “Return on Instructional Investment”

Related Links

Transcript: For N.C. Superintendent, Opportunity Culture® Teams Lead to a “Return on Instructional Investment”

Blog Post: Keeping Advanced Roles Alive and Thriving: Vance County’s Experience

Video: Teach Boldly: Vance County Schools

Blog Post: Spreading Support in Vance County During At-Home Learning

Educator Column: Personalize learning for educators, not just students

Video: Best of Both Worlds

Video: I Wish Every School Had Opportunity Culture

Blog Post: Voices from Vance: How Opportunity Culture is Working for One N.C. District

Follow Us on LinkedIn!

Keep Learning

PA Needs Teachers—and Needs Them to Stay

May 7, 2026

“Educators are deeply committed to students, but the job itself has increasingly become difficult to sustain.”—Jill Weller-Reilly, Teach Plus Pennsylvania senior policy fellow/2024 Policy Fellow of the Year When a coalition came together to form PA Needs Teachers in...

When Districts Share Staff, Students and Teachers Win

April 3, 2026

When Rockingham County Schools, a rural North Carolina district, needed a teaching team leader with a record of high-growth learning for high school math, it faced a dilemma many rural areas confront: no candidate was available who had that record of learning growth...

In Mississippi, Responding to a Teacher Retention Crisis

March 26, 2026

Left to right: Grace Braezeale and Angela Bass of Mississippi First; Sanford Johnson and Sharon Buckhanan of Teach Plus Mississippi. In recent months, both Mississippi First and Teach Plus Mississippi have issued reports advocating for bold legislative action that...