What’s Happening

North Carolina schools with Certified Opportunity Culture School^® status were two to three times more likely to exceed learning growth expectations than schools not using Opportunity Culture^® staffing design, 2024–25 data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction shows.

Of all 258 schools with certification, 48% exceeded growth targets, compared with 25% of all schools in the state without these staffing designs.

Of the 222 Title I schools with certification, 43% exceeded growth targets, compared with 21% of Title I schools in the state without these designs.

The certified schools were also significantly less likely to fall short of growth expectations than comparable schools.

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Opportunity Culture^® teaching teams work, U.S. senators heard today in a Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions hearing on the state of K–12 education.

Ector County ISD Superintendent Emeritus Scott Muri was one of the hearing’s five witnesses. When he came to the district in the summer of 2019, he told the committee, “I was faced with 34,000 students, a staff of 4200, 45 schools. Twenty of those schools were ranked D or F by the state of Texas, with 16 of those schools receiving an F rating.

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Congratulations to Midland, Texas, Superintendent Stephanie Howard on the publication of her District Administration op-ed, How to keep teachers: Provide a complete package.

“District leaders say they want to keep great teachers. But how often do actions match the promise?” Howard wrote. “Too often, districts spend far more time doing what it takes to recruit teachers than to retain, equip and empower them. To retain teachers, they need a complete package of preparation, support, career growth and compensation—and now we know how to do just this.”

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As part of the lead-up to the SXSW EDU conference each year, anyone can vote for proposed sessions—and we need your votes to help our three proposals stand out from the 1,450+ submissions!

Please take a few minutes to vote for one or all of our proposals, so we can share what we’ve learned from your Opportunity Culture^® work and help tackle some of the most important issues in education.

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Our latest newsletter has questions–and answers!

How can you reverse student learning slides in three steps ? Avoid K-12 scale fail? Stop wasting student teachers’ time and money? Add tutoring time for free? Right-size your tutoring groups?

How are some Texas districts making six-figure teacher pay a reality, without making them wait decades to reach that point?

What’s an affordable, speedy way to design new team-based teaching that gets results?

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