When a state’s schools have never used Opportunity Culture® staffing design before, what motivates superintendents to bring it to their districts? Hear from Hulbert Public Schools Superintendent Jolyn Choate about why she signed up to be part of the first design cohort in Oklahoma, taking advantage of a funding opportunity that covers the costs of the design and early implementation process. We spoke with Choate just before Hulbert’s first two educators to take on the Multi-Classroom Leader® role began two days of professional learning to prepare for teaching team leadership at Hulbert Elementary, the first of the district’s three schools to implement the role.
Public Impact
Rethinking Teaching: New Ways to Staff America’s Schools
From Bipartisan Policy Center, July 8, 2026, by Adam Johnston
Why America’s One-Teacher Classroom Needs to Change
American classrooms in 2026, in which one teacher instructs 20 to 30 students, are strikingly similar to those from 100 years ago. Most teachers, like a century ago, have two main pathways to advance in their profession. The first option is remaining in the classroom, incrementally increasing their paycheck over decades. The second is to leave the classroom either for administrative roles in schools or to enter a new field entirely. However, there is a third option: Strategic staffing models allow teachers to grow in their careers without leaving the classroom. This explainer outlines what it means to rethink teaching through effective strategic staffing models and which organizations are leading this work.
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Public Impact released a report in 2009 calling for a new approach to teacher staffing where the most effective teachers could reach more students through redesigned roles. They named the approach Opportunity Culture and officially launched the model in 2013.
Key components of Opportunity Culture are: differentiated teacher roles and pay, expanded reach of effective teachers, and small-group tutoring. By the end of 2025, more than 1,150 schools were using this approach, most of which were eligible for Title I funds that serve low-income communities. A study examining 44 Opportunity Culture schools showed student performance improved across math courses. After implementing Opportunity Culture, the teacher vacancy rate decreased 17 percentage points in Ector County, TX, schools while Desert Willow Elementary School in New Mexico posted state-leading literacy proficiency results.
Next-Level TAs: How a Coveted Role Helps Students Succeed
It’s a winning formula: school paraprofessional + tutoring culture focus + support and training + pay supplement = a highly coveted role.
How do schools and students both win when districts begin using the Opportunity Culture® Reach Associate™ role? This audio version of our short publication “Next-Level TAs” explains, with input from district leaders and those who have taken the RA™ role.
From the district perspective: “It really helps to build our pipeline when there aren’t a lot of people out there just begging to become teachers,” and the RA™ perspective: “I’m more hands-on….It’s helping the children get to the next level and succeed.”
May 2026 Newsletter: Teachers In, Teachers Out? Responding to Retention Crisis
Hear how education advocates in Pennsylvania and Mississippi are responding to teacher retention crises in their states, plus check out our podcast on how one rural school district solved a teaching vacancy by sharing a remotely-located team leader with another district. Plus, we shine a spotlight on a district recognized as a “Louisiana Literacy Leader”, congratulate the latest districts with certified schools, and unveil the theme for summer professional learning! All this and more in the May 2026 newsletter!
ECISD announces $6.3 million in Teacher Incentive Allotment awards
From Odessa American, May 14, 2026
Ector County ISD on Thursday handed out big checks to teachers who earned a designation in the state’s Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. This year 532 ECISD teachers were designated by the state, including 175 who are newly designated and 85 who improved their designation. The total amount of TIA money earned by ECISD teachers this year is $6.387 million, up from $4.6 million one year ago. …
Cindy Almance is a 4th-grade Bilingual Multi-Classroom Leader at Sam Houston Elementary. She leveled up her designation, rising from Exemplary to Master, and her incentive checked topped $20,500. She described the award ceremony as emotional.
“It’s a great feeling,” Almance said, adding the students keep her motivated. “I want every child to know that they can go to college and that they can reach all their dreams and everything is possible. [And] for my children, as well. I want them to have a good role model as a mom.”
PA Needs Teachers—and Needs Them to Stay
When a coalition came together to form PA Needs Teachers in 2022, led by Teach Plus Pennsylvania and the National Center on Education and the Economy, it first advocated for policy wins around bringing teachers into the profession, such as student teacher stipends. But Pennsylvania had another problem—teachers got in, but then they got out.
A State Policy Guide for Innovative, High-Impact School Staffing Systems
By the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), April 2026
Traditional school staffing models have remained largely unchanged for decades. Strategic school staffing offers a path forward that is tailored to today’s instructional demands, labor market realities and the needs of the current generation of students.
This policy guide provides legislators, state boards of education, state agency leaders, governors’ offices and district policy leaders with a practical framework for addressing barriers, enabling high-quality implementation, and helping districts to scale up thoughtfully-designed strategic staffing models. [Report has focus on Opportunity Culture design]
Teachers Like It. Research Is Promising. Is This the Solution to Teacher PD?
From Education Week, by Sarah D. Sparks, April 03, 2026
… Federal support for collaborative teaching could encourage more states and districts to improve the scheduling, mentoring, and evaluation structures needed to support formal teacher collaboration—and bolster the already rapid spread of team-teaching models, such as Arizona State University’s Next Education Workforce Initiative and the nonprofit Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture.
When Districts Share Staff, Students and Teachers Win
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 with that record of learning growth who was also ready to lead adults. The Remotely Located Multi-Classroom Leader® role came to the rescue. Public Impact® designed this MCL™ role to allow a team leader in another school down the street or across the state or country to remotely lead a teaching team. So the Rockingham and Edgecombe County districts joined forces, with a proven Edgecombe County team leader taking on a two-person math team in Rockingham as well, providing coaching and guidance to quickly improve instruction for a first-year teacher and a veteran teacher who had not previously taught high school.
In Mississippi, Responding to a Teacher Retention Crisis
In recent months, both Mississippi First and Teach Plus Mississippi have issued reports advocating for bold legislative action that would fund staffing redesign pilots, and they highlighted Opportunity Culture® design. In this audio piece, hear from the leaders of both groups and a Teach Plus Mississippi policy fellow about the dire need they hear from teachers throughout the state to ease the conditions leading to burnout and to great teachers leaving the profession altogether—and their hopes for how things could change for teachers, students, and parents if schools start using the teaching teams proven to support teachers and increase student learning.