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Beverley Tyndall

Great Teachers Can Teach More Students, Even Without Raising Class Sizes

November 19, 2013

Fordham today released a paper by Michael Hansen projecting the impact on student learning if excellent eighth-grade teachers—those in the top 25 percent—were responsible for six or 12 more students per class. He found that moving six students per class to the most effective eighth-grade science and math teachers would have an impact equivalent to removing the bottom 5 percent of teachers.

We imagine many teachers and parents reading that finding will still fret over the idea of increasing class sizes that much, even with great teachers. So here’s some good news: schools can give a lot more than six more students access to excellent teachers, without actually raising class sizes. And they can pay great teachers—or even all teachers—more by doing so.

The key is shifting to new school models that extend the reach of excellent teachers wisely. At Public Impact, we’ve published many such models on OpportunityCulture.org, and honed them via our work with teams of teachers and administrators now implementing them in schools.

In the News: Opportunity Culture® Appearances

November 15, 2013

Recent Opportunity Culture news:

  • Focus federal funding on access to excellent teachers: What is one appropriate and effective way for the federal government to catalyze a transformation of America’s public education system? Federal investments could play a pivotal role. In a new brief Public Impact wrote for the Center for American Progress, Giving Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers: A Vision for Focusing Federal Investments in Education, we suggest four policy levers the federal government could use to allow excellent teachers to lead their peers and reach nearly all students by 2025. Read the brief now; more on this next week.
  • Bryan Hassel talks to Students Matter: Read the interview with Public Impact Co-director Bryan C. Hassel on the “Education Innovation” blog series for a brief overview of his Opportunity Culture work.

 

Giving Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers

November 13, 2013

In a new brief written for the Center for American Progress, Public Impact explains why and how the federal government must focus states and districts on giving every student access to excellent teachers.

6 Ways to Pay All Teachers More–Within Budget

October 31, 2013

Our fresh approach to paying teachers more is the basic premise of an Opportunity Culture: Use redesigned jobs and age-appropriate technology to reallocate spending toward what matters most—great teaching. But have you wondered just how that works?

Our new three-page brief, 6 Ways to Pay All Teachers More Within Budget, spells it out for you. With Opportunity Culture models, schools can extend the reach of excellent teachers and the teams they lead to more students, for more pay, within budget (not temporary grants)—making significant pay increases possible for all teachers.

Savings and cost calculations of several models–Multi-Classroom Leadership, Elementary Subject Specialization, Time-Technology Swaps, and the combination at the secondary level of Multi-Classroom Leadership with Time-Technology Swaps–show that schools could pay teachers approximately 20 to 130 percent more—without increasing class sizes, and within existing budgets. Even when increasing all team teachers’ pay, schools can still pay teacher-leaders approximately 65 to 80 percent more. And beyond that, reallocating other current spending could offer yet another boost to teachers’ pay, beyond what we have demonstrated so far in our Opportunity Culture models.

Multi-Classroom Leader®: Why I Love This Teaching/Leading Model

October 29, 2013

Romain Bertrand, a multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Ranson IB Middle School in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, wants to spread the word: Keep great teachers in the classroom, splitting their time between teaching and leading other teachers–for more pay. In “To be or not to be in the classroom, that is the question…“, Bertrand blogs about the sadness of teachers feeling forced out of the classroom in order to progress in their careers–and why using the MCL model should be the way forward for schools.

“For years, a sad reality has been hurting our educational system, at least here in North Carolina: If you are good at teaching and you truly enjoy it, the only way for you to expand your impact and advance in your career is to … leave the very same classroom where you currently excel,” Bertrand writes.

“This paradox has become a dirty little secret that we all whisper: At one point, I am going to have to leave the classroom. It can be to make a decent living (extremely sad but understandable point) but it can also be to find a way to reach more students through instructional coaching and school leadership. Often, it can be to try [to] combine both goals. Couldn’t there be another way?”

Using Blended Learning to Pay Teachers More

October 28, 2013

The power and promise of blended learning—to let students learn individually paced basics online, so teachers can focus on personalized, enriched face-to-face instruction—can bring excellent teaching to more students, and enable all teachers to earn at least 20 percent more, sustainably. In addition, teachers can gain planning and collaboration time during school hours.

How? In what we call Time-Technology Swaps—one of the job models in an Opportunity Culture— excellent teachers and the teams they lead reach more students, for more pay, within budget, without having to increase class sizes. Paraprofessionals working with leadership and direction from teachers supervise the online-learning time. Lower wage rates for paraprofessionals enable higher pay for the excellent teachers and their teams. These teaching teams can teach more students without increasing class size because, at a given time, some of their students are online while teachers work in person with others. Schools can even reduce class sizes and still pay teachers more.

Scalable Secondary-Level School Models Increase Teacher Pay, Planning Time

October 24, 2013

Recently, I was chatting with a secondary school-level teacher who co-leads her teacher-run charter school. In her school, scheduling and staffing deliberately provide abundant teacher collaboration time and teacher-leadership, crucial for teachers to innovate and improve as they serve the school’s high-need population. She asked, “Emily, how can we make models like this scalable and appealing to more schools, so that districts use them, too?”

We have just released our latest calculations in the Opportunity Culture series, which indicate that middle and high school teachers who use blended learning and lead teaching teams can earn 20 to 67 percent more, within current budgets, and without class-size increases. This requires new school models with redesigned teacher roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students. Using these models, teachers also gain 5 to 15 additional school hours weekly to plan and improve instruction collaboratively.

In the News: Opportunity Culture® Appearances

October 11, 2013

Recent Opportunity Culture appearances:

  • The Education Commission of the States recommends our new “Opportunity Culture for All” brief in its October 9 newsletter, saying: “The bad news: Between 1970 and 2010, per pupil spending went up almost 150%, but only 11% went to teachers. Teacher salaries and student outcomes stagnated. There’s a better way, the authors argue. Junk the one-teacher-one-classroom model. Create teaching teams led by one excellent teacher so more kids get exposed. Use digital instruction and paraprofessionals to save money and spend that money on better teacher pay. Be more selective about which teachers enter, which teachers stay.”
  • The recently released e-book Navigating the Digital Shift: Implementation Strategies for Blended and Online Learning, from the Digital Learning Now! Smart Series, includes the paper on “Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning Can Improve the Teaching Profession,” by Public Impact’s Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel, and John Bailey, Carri Schneider,and Tom Vander Ark. It explains the necessity of creating an Opportunity Culture when using blended learning and why, without that, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to bring personalized blended learning to scale in order to reach every student in every classroom with excellence. As the authors note: “Truly understanding the potential of blended learning leads to the realization that teachers become even more important in a personalized learning environment. This realization, that teaching matters now more than ever, undergirds the “Opportunity Culture” work of Public Impact, which explores how schools can extend the reach of excellent teachers using job redesign and technology and, in doing so, lead to better conditions and careers for teachers.”
  • Romain Bertrand, a Multi-Classroom Leader® at Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte-Mecklenburg whom we profiled in an Opportunity Culture case study, has started a blog about his work in Ranson’s exciting first year using Opportunity Culture models. Update: He also has just been asked to write for his district’s “Teaching & Learning in CMS” blog on his experience leading teams of teachers to implement blended learning–see his first post here.

Could You Give All Students Excellent Teachers–and Pay More?

October 10, 2013

What if every U.S. student had a new civil right to an excellent teacher, every year, in all core subjects? What if schools also had to pay teachers at least 20 percent more, within budget? Could you design a school that met those demands?

Try it: Use Public Impact’s free Opportunity Culture scenarios to see if you could design a rural or urban, high-poverty school that

  • closes gaps and helps all students leap ahead by letting excellent teachers take responsibility for all students’ learning in core subjects;
  • pays all teachers more, and excellent teachers who lead teams far more, within budget
  • gives teachers frequent school-day time for planning, team collaboration, and on-the-job development; and
  • does not reduce student learning time.

It’s a tall order, but new school models, now being implemented in pilot schools in the U.S., can make what we call an Opportunity Culture a reality.

Designed to help district and school design teams rethink the one-teacher-one-classroom mode, these scenarios ask planners to assume the role of a school principal. The principal must develop a plan to give all students access to excellent teachers and their teams with the school’s current staff, without any new funding. The principal must make the school attractive by both paying teachers more and offering them a great place to work—full of teaching career advancement opportunities and job-embedded development led by teacher-leaders.

A New Civil Right

October 7, 2013

District administrators can use these materials as an exercise in rethinking the standard school set-up, and professors in business, public policy, or education schools, or teacher or leader preparation programs, can use these with their classes.