Opportunity Culture® Cohorts and Collaboration: EdNC Op-Eds

by | March 21, 2025

Thanks to EdNC.org this week for publishing two op-eds by the leaders of The Innovation Project (TIP) and Public Impact, focused on exciting district strategic staffing collaboration in North Carolina.

Photo courtesy of The Innovation Project
Photo courtesy of The Innovation Project

For collaborating districts, cohorts have power to address teacher shortages, student outcomes: No school wants to gamble with their students’ futures, wrote TIP CEO Sharon Contreras and Public Impact Co-President Bryan Hassel. But when teacher shortages loom, schools trying to attract enough great teachers can feel like they’ve been dealt a losing hand. Read how a cohort of five districts–Wake, Rockingham, Edgecombe, Elizabeth City, and Rowan-Salisbury–joined forces to plan team roles that extend the reach of excellent teaching, pay educators more, and improve student outcomes.

“We believe these districts can serve as exemplars for cross-site collaboration across North Carolina, driving innovation, cost savings, talent sharing, and learning results while addressing staffing shortages too,” Contreras and Hassel wrote. 

With pioneering collaboration, districts share excellent educators: What if a great teaching team leader took on two more team teachers — who just happened to be nearly three hours and six districts away? That’s what happened when the Edgecombe and Rockingham districts collaborated–showing how this can work with a team leader who could be down the street or several states away. Learn how this “remotely located” role can help districts expand the reach of excellent teachers: “we’re moving far beyond just breaking free of one-teacher, one-classroom limitations,” Hassel and Contreras wrote.

Keep Reading

How to Avoid K–12 Scale Fail

In K–12, decades of reforms have produced vanishing outcomes. Instructional methods and materials with eye-popping results in small studies fizzle out when scaled. Then, true believers double down on intensive teacher training and coaching to get their reform “done...

3 Moves to Reverse Student Learning Slide

Our nation could reverse and completely recover from student learning slides with three moves: 1. Embed small-group tutoring in regular classrooms by boosting the time all adults spend on it for all students. 2. Spread accountable teacher-leader roles reserved for...

Listen: Public Impact on the Learning Can’t Wait Podcast

Out today: Public Impact Co-President Bryan Hassel and Senior Vice President Kendall King joined the Learning Can't Wait podcast, sharing the background, results, and new possibilities of the Opportunity Culture initiative. To get motivated about giving every student...