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Opportunity Culture® News and Views

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

by | 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

by | 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?

by | 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.

Why ALL Teachers Need an Opportunity Culture®–A Refreshed Vision

by | September 25, 2013

After decades of reform efforts, have any of the players in education really gotten what they want? Teachers still don’t get the respect and substantial rewards they deserve, and students haven’t seen big leaps in achievement. Public Impact Co-Directors Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel see a new way forward–one that focuses on excellent teachers, but takes us to a brighter future for everyone. In An Opportunity Culture for All: Making Teaching a Highly Paid, High-Impact Profession, the Hassels update their vision of an Opportunity Culture, showing how extending the reach of great teachers can start a virtuous cycle of excellence and higher pay for all teachers.

In the News: Opportunity Culture® in Nashville

by | September 20, 2013

Multi-classroom leaders in Nashville’s iZone: Listen to Aundrea Cline-Thomas report on NewsChannel5 about Opportunity Culture teacher-leaders at Buena Vista Elementary, Robert Churchwell Elementary, and Bailey Middle School in Metro Nashville Public Schools. Cline-Thomas discusses how these excellent teachers are extending their reach to more students by leading a team of teachers–while being accountable for the results of all students in the team–and focusing their own teaching on small groups of struggling students, all for more pay. Read more about Multi-Classroom Leadership, and see how Charlotte, N.C., schools are implementing this model.

In the News: Column Highlights Public Impact®, Project L.I.F.T.

by | August 20, 2013

Christopher Gergen and Stephen Martin focused their “Doing Better at Doing Good” column* in The (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer on Public Impact and our Opportunity Culture models, noting our work with Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Project L.I.F.T.

“The reach extension strategy has far-reaching implications for the way our classrooms are designed, our teachers are trained, and our budgets are constructed. It’s transformative work that is hard to do. But the allure of providing excellent teaching for all of our children while providing team-based development and well-compensated professional pathways to our state’s teachers is undeniable,” wrote Gergen, the founder of Bull City Forward and Queen City Forward, a fellow with the Fuqua Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University, and author of Life Entrepreneurs, and Martin, a director at the Center for Creative Leadership and author of The Messy Quest for Meaning.

In the News: Opportunity Culture® Appearances

by | August 2, 2013

Recent Opportunity Culture appearances:

  • Getting Smart listed Public Impact and our Opportunity Culture initiative in its first annual “smart list” of great policy and advocacy organizations making a difference. The 40 groups on the list “put students first, set the path, and lead the conversation.”
  • EdSurge ran a featured article on our latest case study, on Rocketship Education, discussing how Rocketship’s modifications to its blended-learning model “put teachers in the driver’s seat.” This is the fourth in a series of Opportunity Culture case studies Public Impact published this summer, to great response and high demand; more case studies will be coming this fall and beyond.

Rocketship Education: Bringing Tech Closer to Teachers

by | July 24, 2013

When Rocketship Education, a pioneering, rapidly expanding charter school network, looked at its results, it could have rested on its laurels. After all, with seven schools in California together ranking as the top public school system for low-income elementary students, Rocketship had proof that its blended-learning model— combining online learning with face-to-face instruction—works.

But next year, Rocketship leaders will fix a disconnect they see between what happens in the online learning lab and the classroom, to give teachers more control over the students’ digital learning and further individualize the teaching.

Instead of reporting to a separate computer lab, fourth- and fifth-graders will move within an open, flexible classroom between digital learning and in-person instruction, with those moves based on their individual needs and the roles that specific teachers are best suited to play—similar to the Opportunity Culture Time-Technology Swap—Flex model and the Role Specialization model.

In the latest Opportunity Culture case study from Public Impact, Rocketship Education: Pioneering Charter Network Innovates Again, Bringing Tech Closer to Teachers, we look at what Rocketship has done so far to achieve its top results, and where it’s headed.

In the News: Opportunity Culture® Appearances

by | July 19, 2013

Recent Opportunity Culture appearances: