In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture®

by | January 30, 2015

New Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) Superintendent Ann Clark highlighted the district’s Opportunity Culture® career paths in her “State of our Schools” speech Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reports.*

Discussing the need to be competitive on teacher pay to retain teachers, Clark pointed out how an Opportunity Culture® helps great teachers stay in the classroom while making much more money, using such models as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps. Pay supplements for multi-classroom leaders can be as much as $23,000, or 50 percent more than average teacher pay in North Carolina, for example–within current school budgets.

Shortly into the first year of Opportunity Culture® implementation in four schools, the district’s top leaders, including Clark, were so pleased that they decided to dramatically scale it up to reach nearly half the schools in the district by 2017-18. Now in their second year, those four schools were joined by 17 more, with up to eight more joining next year.

*This article is no longer available online.

Note: Public Impact® and Opportunity Culture® are registered trademarks; Multi-Classroom Leader® and Multi-Classroom Leadership™ are trademarked terms, registration pending.

Keep Reading

Congratulating All Certified Schools

It's a Certified Opportunity Culture School® bonanza! Congratulations to the 38 systems and more than 460 schools that received Certified Opportunity Culture School® status for 2025–26. Getting certified isn’t a box-checking exercise in compliance; it’s a top way for...

3 Key Steps for State Policymakers: Our New Journal Article

Nationally, hundreds of Title I schools using Opportunity Culture® staffing design 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–outcomes exceeding other national...

Can Districts Miles Apart Share Staff Successfully—And Why Would They?

We think of school districts in a steady competition for teacher talent--but what happens when they collaborate to share staff instead? Listen to our latest Opportunity Culture® Audio podcast to hear how two North Carolina districts, hours apart, worked together when...