student learning growth

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.

In the U.S., STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) get a lot of press lately. But it’s still hard for leaders to connect the dots: Too few skilled STEM teachers lead to too few students embracing STEM subjects, leading to too few STEM-trained workers to fill available jobs. The consequences for students-turned-job-seekers, businesses, and the U.S. economy—where STEM jobs are an economic growth multiplier—are enormous.

The statistics are grim. In Reaching All Students with Excellent STEM Teachers: Education Leaders’ Brief and the accompanying slide deck, Public Impact lays them out and then explains how Opportunity Culture school models can help. These models extend teachers’ reach to more students, for more pay, within budget, by saving teachers time and letting them lead peers while teaching in new career paths.

This report is part of Public Impact’s commitment to 100Kin10, a national network of more than 150 partners responding to the national imperative to train 100,000 excellent STEM teachers in 10 years and keep our best STEM teachers in the classroom.

“Many of 100Kin10’s partners focus on changing the opportunities and support available to STEM teachers,” says Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director and co-founder of 100Kin10. “Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture effort to extend the reach of excellent teachers and pay them far more is a powerful way to address teacher shortages and retention challenges.”

Who needs this new brief and slide deck?

• District leaders—to learn how to improve your STEM efforts
• Teachers—to support your advocacy for meaningful professional learning and advancement
• Teacher-prep programs—to grasp how grim things are,and steer aspiring STEM teachers toward districts offering better career opportunities
• State policymakers—to grasp why tinkering at the edges of traditional school models isn’t enough, and how policies can make an Opportunity Culture schools feasible statewide
• Business leaders—to understand the root of the STEM employee shortage, and to learn what education reforms will help close the gaps
• Reporters—to understand the background statistics and ways of addressing the STEM shortage

Opportunity Culture pilot schools are already attracting far more STEM teachers, by extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for significantly higher pay, within regular budgets. Early implementers received 30 applications for each open position, even in high-poverty schools that could not fill positions previously. Those are teachers who otherwise might be tempted away by the higher pay and multiple advancement opportunities of other STEM careers.

In an Opportunity Culture, students can experience consistent access to excellent STEM teaching. Great teachers can stay in the classroom while they advance. They lead teams on the job with clear authority and time to plan and collaborate, specialize in their best subjects, or use age-appropriate amounts of digital instruction, without having to increase class sizes.

Excellent STEM teachers in Opportunity Culture schools are already earning 10 to 50 percent pay supplements from within their schools’ regular budgets, not temporary grants.

As we’ve noted in previous posts, schools continue to join the Opportunity Culture initiative, eager to work with teachers on redesigning their teaching roles and career paths. As the first year of implementation in Opportunity Culture pilot schools wound down, we looked at the impact of just the 31 leading-edge schools who had joined the initiative by April. (Six more high schools joined in May but are not included in these figures, as they hadn’t yet had a chance to make their Opportunity Culture plans).

What can we project for these 31 schools by the time they implement their models fully, over three years?

* About 15,000 students reached consistently by excellent teachers and their excellence-focused teams each year

* About 450 teachers earning far more in new roles that let teachers focus on what they do best, learn from excellent teacher-leaders, and advance without leaving the classroom**

* Almost $4 million in extra teacher pay annually in just these 31 implementing schools

* About 80,000 new, additional hours total for planning, collaboration, and on-the-job learning during school hours annually—180 more hours per teacher, per year

* About $290,000 to $900,000 in additional lifetime pay, in current dollars, per teacher (this number will be more than $1 million as some schools implement wider-span teacher-leader roles)

* About $130 million total additional pay if all 450 teachers (or others like them) remain in these uniquely financially sustainable career advancement models for 35 years. Within budget.

See more below. And see Projected Statewide Impact of “Opportunity Culture” School Models to see how an Opportunity Culture can affect a state’s economy as well—to the tune of billions of dollars in state domestic product increases.

These are the numbers for just 31 schools. Imagine the numbers when a whole nation has schools in which teachers lead, learn on the job, help more students excel, and get paid for it—forever.