The power and promise of blended learning—to let students learn individually paced basics online, so teachers can focus on personalized, enriched face-to-face instruction—can bring excellent teaching to more students, and enable all teachers to earn at least 20 percent more, sustainably. In addition, teachers can gain planning and collaboration time during school hours.
How? In what we call Time-Technology Swaps—one of the job models in an Opportunity Culture— excellent teachers and the teams they lead reach more students, for more pay, within budget, without having to increase class sizes. Paraprofessionals working with leadership and direction from teachers supervise the online-learning time. Lower wage rates for paraprofessionals enable higher pay for the excellent teachers and their teams. These teaching teams can teach more students without increasing class size because, at a given time, some of their students are online while teachers work in person with others. Schools can even reduce class sizes and still pay teachers more.