
Public Impact’s well-honed process and quality monitoring tools help your district/CMO and schools efficiently design, implement, and maintain your Opportunity Culture models to achieve the learning results you seek. Our unique School Excellence Portal makes it easier.
Watch: Take a virtual visit to two Opportunity Culture districts
Our technical assistance includes helping you:
Wisely
Collaboratively
& Improve
Results
Design Wisely
Project Launch and Information Sessions
We work closely with your district/CMO design leader to ensure that principals and other leaders understand the Opportunity Culture concepts and design process.
District Design Assistance
We facilitate a series of sessions to guide your team of district/CMO leaders in establishing Opportunity Culture parameters and processes. Our team provides tools to aid decision making, lessons learned, and examples from other sites, and provides analysis and recommendations based on your local context.
School Design Assistance
We facilitate a series of sessions to help your school design teams clarify their goals for Opportunity Culture implementation and construct school plans and schedules to meet those objectives. This work includes financial analyses to ensure that school plans are sustainably designed within current budgets.
Implement Collaboratively
Recruitment and Selection Support
We provide extensive recruitment and selection support and tools, and train district/CMO personnel on the behavioral event interview technique to select candidates who display the competencies needed for success in these valuable, high-potential roles.
Professional Learning Sessions for Opportunity Culture Roles
We provide summer and school-year professional learning sessions to help Opportunity Culture educators prepare for success in their new roles and school models, and address in a timely fashion topics and needs likely to arise throughout the year.
Monitor & Improve
Site Visits and Feedback
We conduct site visits during the first year of implementation to interview staff in a variety of roles. We share our findings with school leaders and provide coaching sessions to help them strengthen their school’s implementation.
Analysis of Outcomes and Results
At a minimum, we assess student and teacher outcomes and conduct school staff surveys, and share our findings with district/CMO and school personnel to help improve implementation. Our data analysis team can also customize a deeper data analysis at your request.
Opportunity Culture School Excellence Portal
Our online portal allows us to provide you with a virtual planning and communications platform to support essential activities, give rapid, personalized feedback on implementation, ease the collection of data for analysis of outcomes, and provide educators with curated information and resources..
Achieve Learning Results
Results That Last
After initial design, districts/CMOs and schools can maintain access to the School Excellence Portal’s premium resources and quality monitoring tools for a low cost. Public Impact and our national funders invested in this resource to help you ensure long-term strong student learning outcomes and educator satisfaction.
Ongoing Learning
Educators get initial training for their new roles in professional learning sessions led by Public Impact and strong Opportunity Culture teacher-leaders, and continue to develop their leadership and instructional skills in sessions throughout the year.
Nationwide Connections to Great Educators
Through webinars, videos, written resources, and occasional community of practice opportunities, we help Opportunity Culture educators connect with peers in roles like theirs within their site and across the country.
Contact Public Impact to start your Opportunity Culture design process!
Possible Sources of Funds
Keeping in mind the many demands on a district/CMO’s funds, we strive to provide high-quality support and guidance at a reasonable cost. Public Impact and our national funders subsidize our work by funding free and low-cost materials to aid Opportunity Culture design and educator implementation, data analysis to determine what approaches work, and other aspects of support that we do not charge to Opportunity Culture sites.
Sites have used a variety of funding sources to engage Public Impact’s support, such as:
- Grants from local or regional philanthropies
- Title I and Title II allocations
- ESSER funds
- Competitive state grants
CALDER’s rigorous third-party study of the Opportunity Culture initiative meets ESSA requirements for an evidence-based intervention for schools in need of improvement, so districts and schools can use federal funds to support Opportunity Culture design. Download a one-page summary of the research basis for the Opportunity Culture initiative to share with colleagues and potential funders.
Sample Design Year Timeline
Months | Activity |
---|---|
August – September | Information Sharing and Planning |
October – February | Design Phase: Design Sessions with District Design Team Design Sessions with School Design Teams |
March – May | Recruitment and Selection |
Summer | Training for Opportunity Culture educators |
Sample Phase-In to Achieve 100% Implementation
Districts typically begin Opportunity Culture design in a set of 5 to 15 schools, then add schools each year. Public Impact’s approach is to continue our technical assistance engagement until your district reaches implementation in 75 percent of its schools. During those years, we taper our support as your district develops the structures and capacity to lead school design work and professional learning.
This table illustrates the phase-in pacing we suggest for districts or CMOs; each column shows how many additional schools implement Opportunity Culture designs each year.
District Size (# schools) | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | Year 7+ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Very Small (1-14) | 5 | All remaining | |||||
Small (15-29) | 5 | 10 | All remaining | ||||
Medium (30-74) | 8 | 15 | 20 | 20 | All remaining | ||
Large (75-174) | 10 | 15 | 30 | 40 | 40 | 40 | |
Extra-Large (175+) | 10 | 15 | 30 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 |