Opportunity Culture results

Annual Opportunity Culture® Dashboard Update Highlights Growth, Educator Support in 2020–21

By Public Impact, May 13, 2021

In 2020–21, Opportunity Culture roles continued to provide a model of support that kept spreading, even in an exceptionally challenging year for educators, students, and families.

As the Opportunity Culture Dashboard shows in its 2020–21 update, 13 more districts joined the Opportunity Culture initiative, founded and led by Public Impact. Nationally, Opportunity Culture sites now reach over 83,000 students with excellent teaching and over 3,400 teachers with advanced roles or on-the-job support and development on teaching teams. Read more…

Midland, Texas, Educators Highlight Early Opportunity Culture® Impact

By Paola Gilliam, January 21, 2021

Midway through its first year of Opportunity Culture implementation, the Midland, Texas, school district shared Opportunity Culture impacts so far with its school board on Tuesday.

“Opportunity Culture brings our teachers together, and it provides them the courage that is contagious in the classrooms we have,” Chris Hightower, the district’s Opportunity Culture lead, told the board. He introduced an Opportunity Culture principal, multi-classroom leader (MCL), and former teacher resident turned first-year teacher to share brief thoughts. Read more…

Opportunity Culture® Year in Review 2019-20

By Paola Gilliam, May 28, 2020

As the 2019–20 school year draws to a dramatically different close, we’ve heard repeatedly from Opportunity Culture educators about the personal and professional difficulties and stresses of making the move to at-home learning.

But through the entire year, their compassion for students and drive to bring them the best education persisted. Opportunity Culture educators continued to provide one another and students with support, help their schools reach for high learning growth, and spread the benefits of excellent teaching and leadership in Opportunity Culture schools to more students and teachers. Here are just a few highlights of Opportunity Culture news and resources from this year that would not have been possible without the excellence of Opportunity Culture educators. Read more…

In Mineral Wells, Texas, Opportunity Culture® Brings Academic Gains, Discipline Reductions

By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, May 15, 2020
Part 3 of 3

At Travis Elementary in Mineral Wells Independent School District in Texas, “we have made some big strides over the past three years, and I 100 percent directly credit that to Opportunity Culture,” Principal David Wells said.

In student learning gains, Wells cites the number of students reaching the “passing standard” of the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness). He also looks at the performance gap between his school, with about 80 percent of students classified as low-income, and the Texas state average. Read more…

Annual Dashboard Update: Reaching Ever More Students with Excellent Teaching and Teachers with Excellent Career Opportunities and Support

By Public Impact, March 27, 2020

With little time to prepare for at-home teaching and learning, Opportunity Culture educators are bravely and innovatively doing what’s best for students.

We’re not surprised: Each year, we report the latest Opportunity Culture statistics in our online dashboard. Opportunity Culture—currently composed of 90 percent Title I-eligible schools—continues to expand Multi-Classroom Leadership, growing 50 percent annually, on average, and empowering well-paid multi-classroom leaders to help a wide range of teachers produce higher-growth learning. Read more…

For a Strong Opportunity Culture®, Include Support from the Top

By Margaret High and Sharon Kebschull Barrett, February 11, 2020

Whenever the Public Impact team interviews Opportunity Culture educators, one word comes up again and again: support. With multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) at the core, support flows up and down—up from MCLs serving as an instructional leadership team for their principals, down from MCLs to their teaching teams, and even sideways, with MCLs forming a supportive team for one another.

That schoolwide support becomes even more powerful when backed up by strong, vocal support from a superintendent and central office. Read more…

2019: Opportunity Culture® Continues to Grow, Inspire

By Margaret High, December 20, 2019

Opportunity Culture kept growing in 2019 to bring excellent teaching to students and career opportunities to educators. Our 10 most-read posts in 2019 included educator columns, new districts, the hot topic of the science of reading, teaching residencies, and more. Read more…

Suspending student suspensions: How teaching teams created calm classrooms

By Philip Steffes; first published by EducationNC, December 5, 2019

How can kids learn when they’re not in the classroom? That’s the issue I confronted when I arrived at Albemarle Road Elementary in Charlotte four years ago. Despite teachers who truly cared about their students, we had far too many suspensions. And students were struggling. When I first came here, 95% of our teachers had been in the red — not meeting student growth targets — in literacy for multiple years.

Vance County Schools’ Jackson Named N.C. Superintendent of the Year

By Margaret High, November 22, 2019

Congratulations to Vance County Schools Superintendent Anthony Jackson, named the 2020 A. Craig Phillips North Carolina Superintendent of the Year! Jackson, who has led Vance County Schools since 2015, brought Opportunity Culture to the district in 2016–17.

“Dr. Tony Jackson has developed a culture of innovation and excellence at Vance County Schools,” Jack Hoke, executive director of the North Carolina School Superintendent’s Association, said at the awards ceremony Tuesday night.

‘Opportunity Culture®’ Schools in Guilford County Bested Overall District Improvement in Reading and Math

From News and Record, October 12, 2019, by Jessie Pounds

Nine local schools that added a new staffing model for teachers last academic year saw student performance on key subjects improve more than Guilford County Schools as a whole, state test data show. Taken together, the schools that implemented “Opportunity Culture” last year improved more than the district as a whole in both reading and math at the fourth-, sixth- and seventh-grade levels.