Our Op-Eds & Articles

From State Education Standard, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett and Bryan C. Hassel, May 2026

While well-crafted staffing redesign can produce strong learning outcomes in districts of all sizes and types, some districts face extra challenges. Title I schools, small towns, and rural schools often struggle the most to fill educator jobs—and especially to attract and keep staff whose students have demonstrated high-growth learning.

Our organization, Public Impact, has tackled daunting design barriers alongside educators in hundreds of Title I schools in 18 states, many in rural and semirural areas and low-income neighborhoods. These schools have defied the odds, substantially improving learning and boosting educator job satisfaction within limited budgets. Nationally, hundreds of Title I schools using the staffing design we created 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, according to public data. Thirteen years of data and experience have also illuminated critical design decisions associated with these outcomes.

What would it take for school systems everywhere to design well and see the same benefits? State policymakers can play a large role, by committing to and catalyzing the transition, clearing policy barriers, and establishing formal checks to ensure that state funds are used for design with results—even in the most challenging contexts.

Read the full article…

From The 74, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett, June 4, 2025

Ask teachers how much their pay matters, and they often shy away from a direct answer, feeling ashamed to admit they do their job for anything beyond a sheer love of helping students.

District leaders more openly acknowledge the importance of compensation, especially for teachers who must work a second job to make ends meet, and in regions that struggle to hire and retain educators.

But they can do more than just help their educators escape a two-job grind. In Texas, one district has made it possible for teachers to earn six-figure salaries without leaving the classroom — and without having to wait for decades.

Every state and district should make this their teachers’ reality.

How is it happening? Take a look at Midland Independent School District, in the Permian Basin. 

Read the full article…

From EdNC, by Bryan Hassel and Sharon Contreras, March 18, 2025

Opportunity Culture roles, created by Public Impact, make it possible for schools to have small teaching teams led by a teacher with a record of student success and adult leadership competencies. This Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) role gets a significant pay supplement, made possible by school budget reallocations, and takes formal accountability for the results of all the team’s students. 

Read the full article…

From EdNC, by Sharon Contreras and Bryan Hassel, March 18, 2025

No school wants to gamble with their students’ futures. But when teacher shortages loom — with educators leaving the profession and fewer graduates opting to make the classroom their career — schools confront tough odds. Too often, schools are trying to find great teachers to serve every student after being dealt a losing hand.

When The Innovation Project (TIP) and Public Impact joined forces in 2024 to support the inaugural cohort of the TIP Opportunity Culture Consortium, bringing together leaders from five school districts — big and small, rural and urban — to rethink school staffing models, the large conference room was abuzz with renewed hope.

Read the full article….

From EdNC, by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, July 8, 2024

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars will evaporate from the U.S. economy due to permanent learning shortfalls post-COVID, by McKinsey’s calculation.

Research has shown high-dosage tutoring is crucial to addressing these shortfalls. In effective high-dosage tutoring, tutors provide students with at least 90 minutes of tutoring per week, aligned with the school’s curricula, in small groups based on their learning data, to build relationships and meet students’ instructional needs. Tutors grow their knowledge and skills through professional development and coaching.

But far too few students in North Carolina get this sort of tutoring.

Is there a way to get tutoring to everyone without increasing costs? Yes, by engaging all available adults to create a “tutoring culture”– for all, by all.

Read the full post here….

By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, first published by EdNC, August 16, 2021

When multi-classroom leader Kenyatta Davenport got the chance to talk to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, her message was simple: Teachers haven’t given up, but we need your support to get students back on track after the coronavirus — and fast.

Simple — and short, since she had limited time to speak to Cardona when he visited Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools on July 12. But Davenport would definitely tell him more if she had the time. Read More…

By Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel; first published in Education Week, October 1, 2020

Even before COVID-19 sent students and educators home, teachers’ jobs had grown increasingly complex. Rightful demands for standards matching those of other nations—and for equitable opportunities allowing students to meet or exceed those standards—swelled over recent decades.

With research clearly indicating how important teacher and principal quality are to student learning growth, a thoughtful school staffing and compensation strategy would have been a natural response. Instead, decades of benevolently intended policy shifts snatched dollars from teachers’ pockets as their jobs got harder, while failing to innovate like other professions.