“A Great Solution”: Opportunity Culture® Design on Future of Education Podcast

by | March 2, 2026

“Asking teachers to be superheroes and be all things to all students is an insane job description,” writes Michael Horn. After having Bryan Hassel and Ashley Williams of Public Impact on his Future of Education podcast to talk about Opportunity Culture® staffing design, Horn wrote, “The work Bryan and Ashley are doing speaks to a great solution—that also makes the job of teaching more motivating and viable.”

In Scaling the Transformation of the Traditional Teaching Model, Hassel and Williams discuss the power of teaching teams. In a LinkedIn post, Horn said the conversation left him with several takeaways, including that:

  • the traditional staffing model creates structural constraints, leading to varying instructional quality, which Multi-Classroom Leader® teams address through distributed leadership
  • career pathways may influence retention, through higher-paid roles that let great teachers stay in the classroom
  • team-based coaching changes how professional development happens, making it ongoing and job-embedded
  • the biggest barrier isn’t proof of concept, but transition cost, so broad adoption is improved with lowered transition costs–a key benefit of the Opportunity Culture® portal
  • policy and AI may shape what’s next, with state funding programs and emerging AI tools potentially hindering or speeding staffing redesign–so system-level conditions matter.

Listen to the full podcast, and we thank Michael Horn for hosting Public Impact!

Keep Reading

Congratulating All Certified Schools

It's a Certified Opportunity Culture School® bonanza! Congratulations to the 38 systems and more than 460 schools that received Certified Opportunity Culture School® status for 2025–26. Getting certified isn’t a box-checking exercise in compliance; it’s a top way for...

3 Key Steps for State Policymakers: Our New Journal Article

Nationally, hundreds of Title I schools using Opportunity Culture® staffing design were two to three times more likely to achieve high-growth learning in 2024–25 than Title I schools in the same states not using these designs–outcomes exceeding other national...

Can Districts Miles Apart Share Staff Successfully—And Why Would They?

We think of school districts in a steady competition for teacher talent--but what happens when they collaborate to share staff instead? Listen to our latest Opportunity Culture® Audio podcast to hear how two North Carolina districts, hours apart, worked together when...