Real Clear Education, September 15, 2015, by Romain Bertrand, Multi-Classroom Leader
“I was not ready to leave a profession I loved, even though I needed the money and wanted the respect.” Many teachers are forced to choose between their profession and financial stability, but Romain Bertrand was able to get both by becoming a multi-classroom leader—one piece of the solution to the profession’s struggle to attract and retain great teachers.
recruitment and retention
Opportunity Culture® Lessons from the First Two Years
By Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel
In our companion post, Opportunity Culture Outcomes: The First Two Years, we shared student, teacher, and design outcomes from the first two years of Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture initiative, which so far has affected more than 30 schools, 450 teachers, and 16,000 students.
The outcomes are promising—better student growth, higher pay, strong teacher satisfaction. However, some pioneering districts, schools, and teachers achieved better, faster results than others. Strengths and challenges varied across sites. Learning from these differences fast is crucial to improved outcomes as more schools and districts create their own Opportunity Cultures, extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for much higher pay, within regular budgets.
These lessons we drew from these early years are based on data we collected and feedback from Opportunity Culture schools and districts, including teachers, principals, and district administrators. Implementation teams from Public Impact or its partners Education First and Education Resource Strategies solicited feedback using “exit slips” after every decision-making meeting with school and district design teams. We conducted interviews with staff and administrators at the school and district level. Implementation teams scheduled regular calls and made site visits eight to 10 times a year, during which we collected feedback and recorded our observations. With that and other data, we created the Opportunity Culture Dashboard, which contains indicators of implementation effectiveness, including student learning outcomes and teacher and staff perceptions from anonymous surveys.
Many of these lessons are no surprise—and yet still a challenge to get right. Some are a challenge only because the people who have power to change them must act with commitment and decisiveness—and the temptations to do otherwise are overwhelming.
Lesson 1: Address Necessary State and District Policy Barriers. Districts and states must identify and address Opportunity Culture (OC) policy barriers before the design process begins, and review annually at midyear in preparation for the next year.
Lesson 2: Establish District Support for Schools’ OC Implementation. District leaders must provide timely technical assistance, tools, decision-making power, and transitional support for small, temporary financial shortfalls for school models within Opportunity Culture Principles.
Lesson 3: Support Strong School Leadership for OC Implementation. Principals need training and support to lead a team of teacher-leaders and other teachers who extend their reach, and they need paid career advancement options that let them remain directly responsible for student outcomes.
Lesson 4: Build and Support Effective Design Teams. Form district and school design teams with clear goals, roles, and decision-making power, staffed with individuals committed to OC Principles; top district leaders must maintain direction and support to implement and scale up the Opportunity Culture designs.
Lesson 5: Create Complete School Design Plans. School designs should include long-term and next-year detail about roles, financial sustainability, technology, schedules, and how teachers will work together.
Lesson 6: Clarify MCL Roles and Build Teaching Team Leadership. Multi-classroom leaders (MCLs)—essential in schools that want to reach all or nearly all students with excellent teachers—need clear roles, advance training, ongoing coaching in leadership and management skills, and protected time to plan and lead.
Lesson 7: Build Schedules that Let Teams Collaborate. Schedule and protect additional in-school time for OC teachers to plan, alone and as a team; review student work; and improve together during the school year.
Lesson 8: Hire Early and Be Selective. Recruit early, advertise widely using multiple methods, make links to Opportunity Culture job openings obvious on the district’s website, and use the materials on OpportunityCulture.org to recruit and be selective among candidates.
Lesson 9: Give Everyone the Right Data to Improve. Interim and annual data should be collected and reported to match OC roles, to help teachers improve during the school year and help principals lead well; consistent interim assessments would help OC teachers.
Opportunity Culture® Outcomes: The First Two Years
This post first appeared in Education Next.
Maybe it’s because we’re turning 50 in the coming year and have together been pondering the plight of the poor and their lost human potential since we were 20. But we’re weary of hearing education reformers pretend that just changing policies and management systems—name your favorite—will put an excellent teacher in every classroom. Even though most of us have spilled voluminous ink on those topics.
What if, instead, change started where excellence already lives—in the classrooms and minds of excellent teachers? That is, those teachers who achieve large student learning gains and leaps in higher-order thinking, and who inspire and motivate students and colleagues alike.
What if all it took to launch were a handful of willing superintendents and some committed principals? Ones willing to empower those excellent teachers: to reach far more students, lead and develop teams of colleagues on-the-job, and help their principals lead their schools, for substantially more pay?
What if all “systems” changes were geared to make that possible, at large scale?
From that line of thinking was born Opportunity Culture, an initiative to try this idea: Let school teams with teachers on them redesign jobs and use age-appropriate technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within regular budgets, adding more planning time, and having them take full accountability for the learning of all the students they serve.
Seven schools in two states began implementing these new school models in 2013–14. More than 30 schools in three states implemented last year, and more than 60 schools in five states will be implementing or designing their school models in 2015–16.
The Public Impact team facilitated school decision-making, along with Education First and Education Resource Strategies, and we produced many free materials to help. But the teachers and principals get all the credit for their outcomes. We’ve gathered data on their early results from the first two years, and we report all the data for which comparison groups were possible.
These outcomes are promising for students and teachers, but there is room to improve the support—and, yes, the systems and policies—that affect teachers in these new roles and their principals.
The Opportunity Culture Dashboard posts school design, student, and teacher outcomes, along with our findings about needed improvements. Among the outcomes:
- More than 150 teachers held advanced roles, and more than 300 other teachers were developed on the job by Opportunity Culture (OC) teacher-leaders in 2014–15.
- Teachers typically reached 33 percent to 300 percent more students than average.
- More than 16,000 students were reached using OC models in 2014–15, over 70 percent of them in STEM classrooms.
- Districts launching recruitment by March received applications at a rate of about 30:1 applications per OC position. Those starting later had between 4:1 and 10:1 per position.
- Teacher pay supplements for advanced roles ranged from $3,500 to $23,000 and averaged approximately $10,000.
- All sites but one paid these supplements completely within regular budgets by reallocating funding, with no grants or special funding; all are within regular budgets for 2015–16.
- Average weekly planning minutes ranged from 225 to 450.
- Of the three schools that implemented Opportunity Culture models schoolwide in the first year:
- Two had high growth in both reading and math in the first year.
- The third school had high growth in reading and math by its second year (subject to state verification).
- In schools transitioning gradually over two to three years, significantly more students in OC classrooms made high growth in the second year than in non-OC classrooms in the same and similar schools—by March 2015, 42 percent to 70 percent more made high growth, depending on the comparison group. Fifty percent more students in non-OC classrooms made low (Annualized data not yet available for OC classrooms; first-year data unavailable due to teacher privacy and lack of comparison data.)
- A significant majority of teachers agreed with a wide range of positive statements about the Opportunity Cultures in their schools in an anonymous survey.
These outcomes are promising, particularly because schools with reported student outcomes were very high-poverty.
However, some pioneering districts, schools, and teachers achieved better, faster results than others. Strengths and challenges varied across sites. Learning quickly from these differences is crucial to improved outcomes as more schools and districts create their own Opportunity Cultures.
How to Hire Great Teachers and Teacher-Leaders: Free Toolkits
In an Opportunity Culture, districts and schools offer new roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets and without forcing class-size increases. The new roles put districts in a much stronger position to hire great teachers—but only if they recruit and select well.
We’ve posted two new toolkits to make that work easier, walking human resources officers and principals through the steps to great hiring, informed by the experiences of early Opportunity Culture districts. These tools are useful for any district hiring teacher-leaders, team teachers, blended-learning teachers, elementary subject specialists, and advanced paraprofessional support—not just Opportunity Culture positions.
The Recruitment Toolkit, downloadable as a PDF, walks districts and schools through the major steps of a successful recruiting effort. It explains why districts that rely on passive strategies—expecting candidates to find out about available positions and apply—will not get the recruitment results they want.
The toolkit addresses key details, such as the timing of recruitment, which ideally begins each year no later than March, to attract a large pool of excellent candidates and capture their interest before they commit to other jobs. Strong recruitment enables districts to attract great candidates regionally, even nationally, who could be a perfect fit for Opportunity Culture or similar roles—including those not actively seeking a new job.
Once schools and districts have a pool of great candidates, what next?
The Teacher and Staff Selection Toolkit provides a four-step guide to help districts and schools select teachers and staff members from competitive talent pools. Districts that have created an Opportunity Culture have seen a surge of applications, even in high-poverty schools. This toolkit helps leaders adapt to a higher volume of applications and the opportunity that volume offers to become very selective in hiring.
The selection kit helps leaders screen and prioritize candidates for these new roles, which require new behaviors and skills beyond those needed in a one-teacher-one-classroom setting. Each step includes a set of considerations, action steps, and links to relevant tools and resources.
Looking for an Opportunity Culture® Job?
Are you intrigued by all you’ve read and heard about an Opportunity Culture?
Interested in extending your reach to more students, for more pay?
Ready to lead from within, sharing your great teaching without leaving the classroom by leading a team, for significantly higher pay?
Are you a new teacher interested in all the support an Opportunity Culture has to offer?
Or do you know teachers who deserve the respect, support, career advancement possibilities, and higher pay that an Opportunity Culture could offer them?
Find Opportunity Culture job postings from several districts here!
Learn more about what current Opportunity Culture teachers think here—multi-classroom leaders, blended-learning teachers, and team teachers discuss their jobs, and principals talk about the benefits of an Opportunity Culture and why they wanted this in their schools.
RealClearEducation.com Launches Opportunity Culture® Series
On RealClearEducation.com today, Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) Kristin Cubbage of Ashley Park Pre-K-8 in Charlotte, N.C., contrasts the support teachers get in an Opportunity Culture school to the support in typical schools—and issues a call to action to policymakers, administrators, and her fellow teachers:
“No school has enough administrators to coach every teacher. In a regular school, the average teacher receives three to five observations yearly. In an Opportunity Culture school, MCLs get to observe their teachers three to five times weekly. …
“How many teachers are out there struggling daily because of lack of support? How many burn out because they’ve tried all they know? How many leave our profession early because they can’t do it on their own any longer? How many kids suffer because they have access to only one teacher? How many students are falling more and more behind because they have zero control over their educational trajectory? We need a change; more important, our students deserve change.” —Kristin Cubbage
Cubbage kicks off a monthly series of posts by Opportunity Culture MCLs, blended-learning teachers, elementary school subject specialists, and principals. In addition to her call to action, she shares her initial response to Opportunity Culture:
“As I listened to administrators at [my school] describe coming changes, I knew in a flash that this new model would bring me my dream job. Asbhley Park would create an “Opportunity Culture” in the 2013–14 academic year, in which high-performing teachers reach more students, for more pay, within current school budgets. One of the new job models in an Opportunity Culture is a “multi-classroom leader”—a teacher who continues to teach while leading a team of teachers, taking accountability for the results of all students served by the team, with plenty of school-day time for planning and collaboration— and much higher pay. … I knew that becoming an MCL, with accountability for multiple teachers and all their students, could be game-changing for teachers and students alike.”—Kristin Cubbage
Read her full column here; watch Kristin and others talk about their Opportunity Culture jobs here.
What Could You Do in an Opportunity Culture®?
“The best of both worlds.”
“There’s no other job like this.”
“This is one of the greatest opportunities teachers have to increase their salary, as well as increasing their skill set, their strategies, and their leadership abilities. I think it’s an amazing opportunity that you just cannot get anywhere else.”
“I think kids are thriving in the environment. I think it’s really powerful.”
“As a professional, this has been the most feedback and constructive criticism in creating this teacher that I’ve always aspired to be, and now I have the support to do it.”
What could you do in an Opportunity Culture? For the teachers in the latest Opportunity Culture video, the possibilities seem far greater than in their former one-teacher-one-classroom roles. As they note, an Opportunity Culture gives them the chance to earn more, learn more, reach more students, and support and lead other teachers.
Teachers, watch and share this video with your colleagues–and then go see what job openings are posted in Opportunity Culture schools at OpportunityCulture.org/jobs/.
Districts, if you’re doing an Opportunity Culture, share this with potential hires. If you’re not doing it, see what you’re missing!
Policymakers, hear directly from teachers and administrators about why an Opportunity Culture appeals to excellent teachers and those aspiring to excellence–then see how you can make an Opportunity Culture possible.
This video can also be viewed on Vimeo.
Opportunity Culture® in the News: How to Transform Education
How can state and district leaders transform education by extending the reach of great teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget? Read our latest thoughts this week:
- On EdNC.org, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel exhort North Carolina’s leaders to focus on the destination–giving all students access to excellent teaching, consistently–and set the guideposts districts need to get there. “State leaders can transform North Carolina by funding a diverse set of districts to design financially sustainable, scalable advanced pay systems that reward excellent teachers for reach and leadership,” write the Hassels, co-directors of Public Impact and founders of the Opportunity Culture initiative.
- On GettingSmart.com, the Hassels write about the challenges–and a possible solution–to the need for great school leaders at a time when schools must achieve deeper learning, not just learning basic skills. They call for a new model–one that combines Multi-Classroom Leadership with multi-school leadership.
- And EducationNext.com highlights our video about the Opportunity Culture choices of Ranson IB Middle and Ashley Park PreK-8 in Charlotte.
Coming Monday: All about our latest Opportunity Culture video!
In the News: Charlotte Multi-Classroom Leaders Explain Jobs
Learn about an Opportunity Culture from some of the people who know it–and love it–best: Ranson IB Middle School multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) Bobby Miles and April Drakeford, along with Principal Alison Harris, and Ashley Park PreK-8 MCL Kristin Cubbage told Andrew Dunn of the Charlotte Observer and TimeWarner Cable News how Opportunity Culture roles keep great teachers in the classroom and provide the support, collaboration, and coaching all teachers need.
“This definitely is my dream job,” Drakeford told TWC News. “Teachers are getting better each week because they’re coached weekly. …It’s a lot of work, but you see so much success.”
In video clips for Dunn’s Opportunity Culture primer, Miles, Cubbage, and Harris explain some of the differences between Opportunity Culture positions and usual teaching roles, and tell how an Opportunity Culture creates career paths for teacher-leaders to stay in the classroom and keep and support great teachers.
In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture®
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.
- Learn more–fast!–about an Opportunity Culture in the new brief Opportunity Culture for Teaching and Learning: Introduction
- Hear what teachers and administrators say about an Opportunity Culture in Voices on Video
- Learn more about Charlotte’s early Opportunity Culture days and its recruiting success