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Opportunity Culture® News and Views

Launching Paid Teacher Leadership with Union-District Partnership

by | November 12, 2015

How could a large number of well-paid teacher-leader roles emerge in a unionized district? This question is at the top of the list for many superintendents.

Syracuse, N.Y., educators have some advice, captured in a new three-page vignette, How One Union-District Partnership Launched an Opportunity Culture. Syracuse union and district leaders discuss their experiences and lessons they learned about working together for a successful launch.

In late 2013, the Syracuse City School District became the nation’s first unionized district to use Opportunity Culture, with four of its highest-need schools choosing and tailoring models to fit. They began to implement their new teacher-leader roles using the Multi-Classroom Leadership model in 2014–15, and are now expanding the roles to many more schools. Multi-classroom leaders—several per school—earn a $12,000 supplement in Syracuse for leading teams and helping their colleagues succeed, while continuing to teach.

Opportunity Culture models extend the reach of teachers who excel with students to more students, directly and by leading other teachers, for much higher pay funded by reallocating existing budgets. Teachers gain planning and collaboration time, and teachers in advanced roles are responsible for the outcomes of all the students they serve—as well as for the support, development, and success of their colleagues when they work in teams. In nearly all cases, instructional group sizes remain the same or even smaller.

The strongest advice from Syracuse on launching an Opportunity Culture? Both union leaders and a former administrator say: Get the union involved from the very beginning, and keep it involved at every step of the way.

The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles

by | November 9, 2015

District leaders love the thought of “teacher leadership” that might attract and retain teachers—especially great ones—and close student learning gaps at a time of rising teacher vacancies.

But too often, teacher-leader roles fail to produce the full impact district leaders intend. They rarely dramatically improve student learning or teacher effectiveness.

What are the usual pitfalls? How can districts avoid them?

The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles, a two-page brief from Public Impact, offers a quick list of the pitfalls, and a chart of the 12 essential factors for creating outstanding teacher-leader roles.

Low-impact teacher-leader roles are a distraction from what great teachers really crave: helping their peers and more students succeed. Defining and organizing high-impact teacher-leader roles can allow great teachers to have a far greater effect on vastly more students and teaching peers.

DO design teacher-leader roles with these 12 factors in mind, involving teachers in the design decisions:

• Selectivity: make advanced roles selective

• Preparation: train teacher-leaders for their roles

• Greater Reach: use roles to give more students access to great teachers, not fewer

• Continued Teaching: let teacher-leaders keep teaching students part time

• Time to Lead—and Learn: give teacher-leaders time to plan and collaborate

• Development Opportunities: let teachers in the same role help one another improve

• Accountability: make teacher-leaders formally responsible for their students and teams

• Formal Authority: give teacher-leaders formal authority to spread their practices

• Higher Pay: pay supplements of at least 10%– 50% of average pay

• Funding Stability: fund higher pay with recurring budgets, not grants or tenuous line items

• Funding Scalability: for big scale, fund extra pay with stable, state-level funds

• Prevalence: ensure that each school has many advanced roles, not just a few

DON’T stumble over pitfalls with plans that have these unfortunate qualities:

Opportunity Culture® Voices: Keep on Keeping On

by | October 16, 2015

“I’m practically a Syracuse City Schools lifetime member—from student, to teacher, to coach, then nearly into administration—but with a happy detour. I got to return to the classroom in a new position of multi-classroom leader. As the MCL, I lead a team of teachers while continuing to teach—the sweet spot for this point in my career.

But at a school new to me, in a new leadership role, with teachers who didn’t necessarily sign up for the total collaboration and openness of this team-teaching model, I faced challenges. I knew we needed to focus on data—we did need data to “drive our instruction”—and that meant sharing our students’ results with the whole team.”

–Syracuse City Schools Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala, in Keep on Keeping On: Using Data to Move Students Forward

Data-driven instruction + a new model of teacher-led team teaching + being at a new, high-need school + data systems that must continue to improve: That’s what Syracuse’s Maggie Vadala took on last year–and very happily. In Thursday’s RealClearEducation.com, Vadala describes the challenges.

“As I dug into the data, I realized I left one important item out: relationships! I was working with five third-grade teachers and 75 students. Altogether, the five teachers had just 11 years of teaching experience.

So while we were sharing our students’ sometimes dismal data, a far-from-comfortable experience for teachers used to working alone, I had to simultaneously build trust. They were welcoming but suspicious about my role—was I just there to run to the principal whenever they made a mistake? Where was I going with all that data? I had a group of committed people; now, they had to trust that I could guide us to accomplish more together than independently.”

Read how she did it, in her warm but no-nonsense, straightfoward approach to leading her team, and their ups and downs along the way. And hear more of Vadala’s thoughts on the accompanying video drawn from our September interview with her. She’s just one of the many inspiring Opportunity Culture teachers and teacher-leaders who sees the difference Opportunity Culture is making in schools. Read past columns from her Opportunity Culture colleagues in the Opportunity Culture series–and thanks to Real Clear Education as always for hosting it.

Big Changes in Big Spring

by | October 15, 2015

What can a rural, 4,000-student district do to attract and retain teachers, and support many brand-new teachers? In “Reconsidering the Traditional Model: Big Spring ISD Works to Build Teacher Career Pathways,” Cindy Clegg writes in the Texas Lone Star about how and why the Big Spring school district is creating an Opportunity Culture.

A publication of the Texas Association of School Boards, the Texas Lone Star takes an in-depth look at the multi-classroom model being used in combination with paraprofessional support to extend the reach of great teachers to many more students and teachers, within regular budgets–from choosing the model to carefully selecting the multi-classroom leaders–who lead a team, coaching, co-planning, and supporting the team, while continuing to teach themselves.

Texas has created a statewide initiative to introduce Opportunity Culture to interested districts. “We are trying to build statewide capacity for school improvement,” says Mark Baxter, director of school improvement and support for the Texas Education Agency.

Big Spring is starting with six multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) at three campuses, who each earn a $10,000 supplement, funded through teacher vacancies and larger classes, which have increased paraprofessional support. Although Opportunity Culture school redesign models do not require larger classes, Big Spring chose to go from 22 to 30 students because, says School Improvement Director Heidi Wagner, “Would you rather have 30 kids in front of one excellent teacher or 22 in front of a mediocre teacher?”

Read the full article here.

Start of a Teacher-Led Revolution? Ask the Teacher-Leaders!

by | October 1, 2015

Last week, Public Impact convened a select group of 90 teachers, principals, district administrators, and national education organization leaders in Chapel Hill, N.C., to plan the future of Opportunity Culture (OC).

The goal: Learn from pioneering OC districts and teachers and plan ahead to improve this work, with help from leaders of national education organizations.

Indianapolis First to Put Opportunity Culture® Into Contract

by | September 9, 2015

The Indianapolis school board and teachers union recently became the first in the country to include Opportunity Culture roles in their new contract, offering pay supplements of up to $18,300—35 percent of the district’s average salary. That comes on top of a major base pay raise—the first in five years—for teachers across the board.

Those pay decisions mean that in 2016–17, for example, a 16-year teacher will be able to earn $77,700 by taking on the highest-paid Opportunity Culture role, leading a team of four to six teachers. (Take note: This pay in Indianapolis is equivalent to pay of more than $110,000 in Washington, D.C. or more than $175,000 in Manhattan.)

The changes are part of an ambitious strategic plan for Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), under the leadership of Superintendent Lewis Ferebee. The contract was ratified by 93 percent of the union members and approved in a 6–0 vote of the IPS Board of School Commissioners.

The Opportunity Culture initiative, created by Public Impact, includes seven districts in five states in 2015–16. Opportunity Culture models extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. Schools provide additional school-day time for planning and collaboration, often with teacher-leaders leading teams and providing frequent, on-the-job development.

A team of teachers and administrators at each school decides how to redo schedules and reallocate money to fund pay supplements permanently, in contrast to temporarily grant-funded programs. Opportunity Culture schools in IPS are expected to reallocate funds primarily from vacant positions to pay for the supplements.

The Indianapolis Education Association voted to include multiple Opportunity Culture roles in the contract, with the highest pay for multi-classroom leaders, who continue to teach while leading a team. These “MCLs” coach, co-teach, co-plan and collaborate with their team teachers, while taking accountability for the learning outcomes of all the students the team serves. In IPS, an MCL who leads a team of one teacher and a paraprofessional known as a reach associate will earn a $6,800 stipend. MCLs who lead a team of two to three teachers and a reach associate will earn an $11,400 stipend. Those leading a team of four to six teachers and two reach associates will earn $18,300 stipends.

All teachers teaching on an MCL-led team will earn $1,300 supplements, if the school can afford to do this for each team in the school.

In contrast, of the 120 large-district contracts in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s national database, most stipends are less than $3,000, and the biggest specified leadership stipend (for department chairs in Wichita, Kansas) is $8,614. The Indianapolis Public Schools’ maximum Opportunity Culture supplement of $18,300 is more than double that amount.

The contract also includes $6,800 supplements for “expanded-impact teachers,” great teachers who extend their reach to at least 33 percent more students with paraprofessional support, but who do not lead teams. These teachers may use enhanced digital instruction, specialization at the elementary level, and other models that include enhanced paraprofessional support.

“We are delighted and impressed by the collaborative environment and genuine commitment we see on the part of both the district and the union in Indianapolis,” said former teacher and Public Impact senior vice president Lucy Steiner, who is leading Public Impact’s assistance to IPS schools with these roles. “We will be working with the district and schools to ensure that teachers have the support they need to be effective in these new roles.” The Joyce Foundation is providing partial support to launch Public Impact’s work with IPS.

IPS is the second collective bargaining district in which the local teachers union has supported Opportunity Culture roles, but the first to include the roles in its contract for all teachers.

Read more:

5 Steps to Great Evaluation: A System to Guide Development, Careers

by | August 27, 2015

Opportunity Culture models, which extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for higher pay within budget, change both the content and process of teacher evaluation—for the better. Public Impact’s newest, free, five-step toolkit, Evaluation, Accountability, and Professional Development in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Guide, gives schools, districts, and states what they need to create an evaluation system that primarily guides teachers’ development and career opportunities.

An accompanying State Policy Brief speaks to anyone who wants laws and other policies to support the Opportunity Culture-style school culture focused on collaboration and excellence.

Why do districts need this? Because today’s systems don’t do what great evaluation should do:

  • support on-the-job and long-term development for great teaching
  • help identify teachers for advanced roles in which they are likely to succeed
  • prepare teachers for advanced roles that help their peers and more students succeed; and
  • match teachers to long-term paths in which they can best succeed.

In the still-prevalent one-teacher-one-classroom model, few districts have provided a robust, sustainably funded way to connect teacher evaluation with career opportunities, and they continue to bump up against questions of fairness in evaluation. How can teachers trust evaluators who rarely see them?

But in an Opportunity Culture, few teachers work alone most of the time. Most work in teams on which each person does what he or she does best, and a team of leaders supports the principal. That team collaboration lets them observe one another’s thinking and actions up close as they work together to plan and deliver instruction, often with the ongoing support, coaching, and co-teaching of a great teacher-leader. That means giving and getting valuable and accurate feedback to support their improvement throughout the year, which supports career advancement, which means helping more students succeed.

But districts and states must deliberately change evaluation to match the team, team leader, and extended-reach roles that are common in schools using Opportunity Culture models. These roles have wider spans of students, sometimes with narrower ranges of teaching content. They require enhanced soft skills—such as teamwork, team leadership, and flexibility—and hard skills, such as managing meetings and analyzing larger sets of student growth data during the year. Not changing evaluation systems appropriately can lead to mismatched students and teachers in formal accountability systems, lack of on-point, frequent feedback for teachers in new roles, missed opportunities for teachers to improve faster, and reduction of further career opportunities—harming teachers and students.

Our new guide helps education leaders align evaluation and its uses with an Opportunity Culture and similar school models and career paths—successfully and at a low cost. It reflects lessons drawn from one-teacher-one-classroom style evaluation as well as early experiences of Opportunity Culture teachers and principals—to guide states, districts, and schools toward ensuring that evaluation supports everyone’s success.

The guide and its tools are organized into sections covering evaluation redesign, evaluation content, evaluation process, and critical uses of evaluation. Each section includes a set of action steps, considerations and guidance, tools, and links to other relevant resources.

Although some changes in evaluation and accountability can be made at the school and district levels, our accompanying brief looks at those that require a policy fix at the state level.

4 Great Examples of Teacher Voice: Opportunity Culture® Columns

by | August 25, 2015

What is it actually like to be a teacher-leader in an Opportunity Culture school? You can read the Opportunity Culture website to understand how an “OC” school works, and you can watch videos of teachers and administrators talking about why they love their jobs, what their roles are like, and other aspects of creating an Opportunity Culture.

For more in-depth looks at various aspects of an Opportunity Culture, though, don’t miss the ongoing series of columns written by OC teacher-leaders appearing in the middle of each month on Real Clear Education. To recap so far:

Kristin Cubbage, a multi-classroom leader (MCL) in Charlotte, kicked off the series with “An Opportunity for Change,” explaining her role as the leader of a teaching team, why she loves it, and calling on education leaders to “open the door” to the opportunities she sees in her school.

Joe Ashby, who was a multi-classroom leader in Nashville, writes about how the MCL model creates a teaching team that allows him to give and receive satisfying, useful professional development every day.

Bobby Miles, a multi-classroom leader in Charlotte, turns to the subject of accountability: MCLs extend their reach to more students by leading their team and continuing to teach students directly, for higher pay–and take accountability for the results of all the students in their team. For Mr. Miles, that means he’s accountable for the results of 421 students–and he loves it. “Far from being scary, it motivates me,” he writes.

And in the latest column, MCL Karen von Klahr, who teaches in Cabarrus County, N.C., writes about “riding the roller coaster together”–providing real support to a brand-new teacher. Watch the accompanying video of Ms. von Klahr and her new teacher discuss the joy they found working together.

If you need an overview of an Opportunity Culture, read an introductory column by Public Impact’s co-directors, Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel.

As the series grows, you can find all the columns here; future posts will include issues of teacher pay, data-driven instruction, blended learning, elementary school teachers specializing in one or two subjects, an Opportunity Culture in a unionized district, and in schools that are not high-poverty.

Instead of Ineffective PD, Try Redesigning Teacher Roles

by | August 14, 2015

TNTP’s new report The Mirage sheds light on the nation’s failure to advance strong professional learning for U.S. teachers. The report includes a call for redesigning schools to extend the reach of great teachers. TNTP President Dan Weisberg’s Ed Week quote on the report is right—to give teachers a real shot at professional learning that works, the nation “ought to be testing whether there are other models of school design, teacher jobs, that have a better chance of getting kids consistently excellent instruction.”

These are the right words, but our nation’s teachers and students need far more than words. Reports are a start. We’ve written quite a few of them ourselves about the need for new school designs that extend excellent teachers’ reach, going back to our 2009 3X for All. TNTP itself called for extending the reach of great teachers in one of its prior reports, The Irreplaceables. Teach Plus, Education Resource Strategies, the National Network of State Teachers of the Year, and others have, too.

Now, however, is the time for action. The consensus has mounted that the one-teacher-one-classroom model is not working well for teachers or students. Yet almost all teachers work in exactly that model, despite report after report calling for something different. It’s time to get out of that swirl of talk and transform schools for the better. As Ben Franklin said, “Well done is better than well said.”

What if all of us, and more, turned talk into action? What if the opportunity of new school designs and teacher roles were available to teachers everywhere?

Fortunately, action is already underway. The teacher voice organization Teach Plus has brought teams of great teachers into struggling schools to lead their transformation. Districts like Denver Public Schools are starting to create meaningful, differential roles for teachers. More than 60 schools in five states and seven public school districts have signed on to Public Impact’s growing Opportunity Culture initiative, now in its third implementation year.

We’re partial to the Opportunity Culture approach, because unlike other efforts, it is financially sustainable—and thus scalable to any school anywhere. In Opportunity Culture schools, successful professional learning is no mirage. Teachers are redesigning their schools’ roles and schedules so that great teachers reach more students, and most teachers work in teams led by excellent teachers. Each team leader takes full responsibility for teacher development and student learning in the team’s subjects and grades. In the 34 schools that implemented an Opportunity Culture last year, teacher-leaders earned an average of $10,000—and as much as $23,000—more for these advanced roles, giving them a clear stake in successfully developing other teachers. They have additional school-day time for planning and co-teaching, coaching, modeling, and collaborating with their teams—providing genuine, on-the-job, consistent development. A team of teachers and administrators at each school decides how to reallocate money to fund pay supplements permanently, in contrast to temporarily grant-funded programs.

As we wrote recently, the early implementers have gotten promising results, including high growth in both reading and math by the second year in schools that used Opportunity Culture models schoolwide. In schools converting more gradually to the new models, the Opportunity Culture classrooms showed far more high growth and far less low growth than students in comparable, non-Opportunity Culture classrooms. In anonymous surveys, teacher satisfaction is high, even among teachers not in advanced roles. Schools have received as many as 30 applicants per position for the advanced roles, and all have been selective. There’s room to improve, but the results point in the right direction. See for yourself on OpportunityCulture.org.

The Mirage is appropriately gloomy on the overall state of professional learning nationwide. Readers need to understand, however, that change is already happening. Charter schools and districts are hopping in the game, but­—for now—the districts are leading on staffing innovation at larger scale. They are implementing entirely new approaches in varied contexts—union and non-union, small town and big city, well-funded and not—and often in challenging circumstances, such as superintendent turnover and severe state policy constraints.

We’ve been pleased to have the CEOs of all the organizations we listed above on the national Opportunity Culture Advisory Team. We have partnered with others, such as Education First, to put the models into action. Many other organizations are well-positioned to help schools redesign themselves to extend excellent teachers’ reach in this way, too. If all of these leaders turn to action now, the stream of professional learning already flowing in 60 schools could become a vast river of learning and job opportunity for U.S. teachers—and their students.

This column first appeared on Education Next.

Hear about an Opportunity Culture from those already using it at Opportunity Culture’s Voices on Video page.