From State Education Standard, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett and Bryan C. Hassel, May 2026
While well-crafted staffing redesign can produce strong learning outcomes in districts of all sizes and types, some districts face extra challenges. Title I schools, small towns, and rural schools often struggle the most to fill educator jobs—and especially to attract and keep staff whose students have demonstrated high-growth learning.
Our organization, Public Impact, has tackled daunting design barriers alongside educators in hundreds of Title I schools in 18 states, many in rural and semirural areas and low-income neighborhoods. These schools have defied the odds, substantially improving learning and boosting educator job satisfaction within limited budgets. Nationally, hundreds of Title I schools using the staffing design we created 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, according to public data. Thirteen years of data and experience have also illuminated critical design decisions associated with these outcomes.
What would it take for school systems everywhere to design well and see the same benefits? State policymakers can play a large role, by committing to and catalyzing the transition, clearing policy barriers, and establishing formal checks to ensure that state funds are used for design with results—even in the most challenging contexts.