Press Releases

February 3, 2026, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—With state funding in New Mexico and North Carolina and private funding in Oklahoma, 25 school systems will join the national Opportunity Culture^® initiative in 2026, extending the reach of excellent teaching to more students, for more pay, within regular budgets. The initiative’s designs have boosted student learning and reduced vacancies nationally.

In Oklahoma, applications are being accepted now for 16 school systems to receive support for innovative staffing redesign and professional learning for educators in new roles. Up to eight systems will begin planning their redesign, using proven Opportunity Culture models that fit district priorities, as early as February to implement in the 2026–27 school year, and the remainder will design this fall. The Oklahoma Public School Resource Center is conducting extensive outreach to school districts and charter networks statewide to encourage them to apply to Public Impact, founder of the Opportunity Culture initiative. Public Impact anticipates collaborating with many partner organizations to mesh this work with ongoing efforts in the state. A private philanthropy is funding the design work as well as an evaluation of the effect on student learning and teacher vacancies in Oklahoma.

In New Mexico, state leaders appropriated three years of funding for innovative staffing redesign to increase educator satisfaction and student learning. The Opportunity Culture initiative received the contract to support up to seven school systems in planning their redesigns. That includes Carlsbad Municipal Schools, which in 2023 became the first New Mexico system to use these models in three schools, leading to reduced teacher vacancies and increased student learning; the models will be in use in all its traditional schools by the 2026–27 school year. The state is also rolling out high-quality instructional materials and methods in some of the same schools, and funding will support evaluation of all sites’ outcomes.

In North Carolina, the Alamance-Burlington and Mooresville districts received state advanced teaching roles grants to plan their Opportunity Culture designs, joining 25 other districts, and more than 300 schools, already using the designs in the state. This grant program, now part of the state’s recurring budget, was created after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) worked with Public Impact to become the first in the nation to use the designs in 2013–14. Its initial pilot was funded by local philanthropists and the district’s own investment. The state grant program has enjoyed consistent bipartisan support, increased pay for thousands of educators, and achieved strong schoolwide learning results overall.

Nationally, Public Impact expects more systems to join in 2026, and several other states are considering similar efforts.

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October 1, 2025, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—In 2024–25, hundreds of 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 these designs, data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction shows.

Opportunity Culture staffing design affects both instruction and human resources by extending the reach of excellent teaching to more students, for more pay, within regular budgets. Schools create Multi-Classroom Leader^® teaching teams, which are led by a teacher with a record of high-growth student learning. A team of teachers and administrators at each school determines the exact team design, and schools vary significantly in their design, curricula, and instruction. Schools can receive certification from Public Impact, which created the Opportunity Culture initiative, by following a set of design standards correlated with student learning growth.

Of all 258 certified schools, 48% exceeded growth targets, compared with 25% of all schools in the state without Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL™) teams.

Of the 222 Title I schools with certification, 43% exceeded growth targets, compared with 21% of Title I schools without the teams.

The certified schools were also significantly less likely to fall short of growth targets than comparable schools in the state. Although Title I schools using these teams without certification were also more likely to exceed growth targets and less likely to fall short, the magnitude of differences was far larger for certified schools.  

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July 15, 2025, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—Opportunity Culture^® staffing models, which create teacher-led teams, continue to produce top-tier results nationally, according to nearly a dozen years of data. The models reach larger numbers of students each year, produce substantial extra student learning growth, provide field-leading pay supplements, and achieve extremely high ratings in educator surveys. Districts examining turnover and vacancies have seen substantial declines. These results have held even as the model scales up nationally, unlike many school reform initiatives whose early results fade.

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February 21, 2025, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—In a year of bleak NAEP outcomes nationwide, the latest data on schools using Opportunity Culture^® teaching teams provides hope for scaling up student learning results nationwide.

Title I schools that had Multi-Classroom Leader^® teaching teams for at least four years and were reaching all students in core subjects in 2023–24 were 83 percent more likely to make high growth schoolwide than Title I schools without these Opportunity Culture teams.*

Title I schools using these teams for at least one year and reaching all students schoolwide in 2023–24 were 61 percent more likely to make high growth schoolwide than Title I schools without the teams.**

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