Reach, results, relationships, and replicability: Public Impact® staffers can recite these words in our sleep. Those are the big categories in which we measure our progress annually, using over 50,000 design data points from Opportunity Culture® sites...
Sharon Kebschull Barrett
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 schools to check reality vs. goals and see where they can improve. Committed to student and educator success, all the schools that earned certified status followed design standards correlated with strong results.
Higher certification levels equal more students reached with excellent teaching and increased small-group tutoring, and more educators reached with support and higher pay—all backed by more than a dozen years of data. Schools meeting the standards and obtaining certified status were two to three times more likely to exceed learning growth expectations schoolwide than schools not using Opportunity Culture® staffing and instructional design.
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 short...
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 strategic staffing efforts. What would it take for school systems everywhere to see the same results?
A big part of the answer lies in the hands of state policymakers. In the latest issue of State Education Standard, the journal of the National Association of State Boards of Education, Sharon Kebschull Barrett and Bryan C. Hassel of Public Impact® provide three key steps policymakers should take to support all of their districts in redesigning for student success and educator satisfaction.
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 one district needed, but couldn’t find, a high school math teaching team leader with a record of producing high-growth learning.
Research | 2-3X schoolwide high-growth learning nationally, high growth by teaching teams with Opportunity Culture® staffing design
From EdNC, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett, March 30, 2026
New national data shows that schools using updated Opportunity Culture® staffing design standards achieved, on average, two to three times the rate of schoolwide high-growth learning of other schools in the same states in 2024-25. These results extend prior findings across North Carolina. In addition, new third-party research in one district found a full extra half-year of learning in reading and more than an extra third of a year in math for students between 2020 and 2024. Prior third-party research on three districts found more than an extra half-year of learning in math.
The staffing designs create teaching teams that reached over 275,000 students and 10,500 teachers in 2025-26 alone and are expanding in 18 states.
Listen: In Mississippi, Responding to a Teacher Retention Crisis
State-level action and support is key to getting excellent teaching to many more students fast–and kids can’t wait. They need better learning, and for that, they need well-supported, well-paid teachers. As the leaders of Mississippi First and Teach Plus highlight in their reports, The Weight They Carry: Life as a Teacher in Mississippi and Reimagining School Staffing: Recommendations from Teach Plus MS Policy Fellows, Mississippi faces not a generic “teacher shortage” but a specific teacher retention crisis.
In our latest audio piece, Angela Bass, executive director of Mississippi First, Grace Braezeale, the director of research and K-12 policy who wrote Mississippi First’s report, Sanford Johnson, executive director of Teach Plus Mississippi, and Policy Fellow Sharon Buckhanan share what they hear from teachers throughout the state about 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 Opportunity Culture® teaching teams, proven to increase student learning and provide job-embedded, in-depth support for teachers.
Superintendents Speak: Podcasts Consider High Learning Growth, Rural “Force Multiplier,” Sparking Reading Achievement
It’s been a month of learning from several superintendents, who’ve come on the Opportunity Culture® Audio podcast to share their thoughts about staffing design in their districts.
Ector County Independent School District
When Superintendent Scott Muri left his high-performing school district for Ector County, Texas, the president of the Ector County Independent School District (ECISD) board said he wondered whether Muri had “lost his mind” when he applied for the job, and Muri acknowledged that it would be a monumental challenge.
Indeed, upon arrival in summer 2019 in Odessa—known for oil wells and high school football—Muri was faced with 16 of the district’s 45 schools receiving an F from the Texas Education Agency, and four more graded a D—along with 350 teaching vacancies for its 34,000 students.
But by 2024, the district was named the K–12 Dive District of the Year, and 2025 found Muri testifying about the district’s turnaround before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.
Superintendent Leadership, Student Results, and Funding Options: Opportunity Culture® Staffing in the News
It's been a busy Opportunity Culture® week! From big research about student results in Texas to superintendents recognized for their impressive implementation to Title II options for funding redesign, the Opportunity Culture® initiative is making a splash. New...