What students want--great teachers every year--and what teachers want--career advancement without leaving teaching, on-the-job professional learning and collaboration, and the chance to help more students succeed--come together in an Opportunity Culture®. What's the...
student learning growth
Doing the Math on Opportunity Culture®’s Early Impact
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.
How a State Could Achieve Major Gains in Learning, Pay, Economy
For several years, we’ve been asking teachers and districts to imagine: Imagine schools and a profession where all teachers can improve their teaching, be rewarded for getting better, and reach more students with excellent instruction—by creating an Opportunity Culture for teachers and students. Districts are responding: As of spring 2014, four districts nationally are piloting Opportunity Culture models, and one, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, is taking its pilot efforts to scale based on recruiting results and demand from schools.
But what if a whole state reimagined the teaching profession and pursued an Opportunity Culture for all? What benefits might accrue for students, teachers and the state as a whole?
Using North Carolina as an example for analysis, Public Impact ran the numbers—and the results weren’t small.
Opportunity Culture models redesign jobs to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget—typically in collaborative teams on which all teachers can pursue instructional excellence together and are formally accountable for all of the students they serve. They are designed to transform the traditional teaching environment and provide new career paths for teachers that allow them to advance their careers without leaving the classroom.
If three-fourths of North Carolina’s classrooms were to implement Opportunity Culture models over one generation of students—about 16 years of implementation—we projected, using conservative assumptions, that:
- Students on average would gain 3.4 more years’ worth of learning than in a traditional school model in the K–12 years.
- Teachers leading teams would earn up to $848,000 more in a 35-year career, with considerably higher figures possible for large-span teacher-leader roles not included in this analysis.
- Teachers joining teams to extend their reach could earn approximately an additional $240,000 over their careers.
- State income tax revenue would be up to $700 million higher in present-value terms over 16 years of implementation; increased corporate and sales tax revenues are not included.
- State domestic product would increase by $4.6 billion to $7.7 billion in present-value terms over the next 16 years.
And that’s just using current numbers for North Carolina, where pay is near the bottom nationally. Teachers leading teams in states with pay closer to the national average would earn up to $1 million more in a 35-year career. (Public Impact has separately suggested that a 10 percent average base pay increase is also needed for teachers in North Carolina.)
Watch: How to Get Great Teaching to More Students
How can more students have access to excellent teachers? Increasing class sizes is one way, but we have many other options, Public Impact’s co-director, Bryan C. Hassel, said at Thursday’s “Expanding Access to Great Teachers” discussion at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute–watch it below.
Bryan joined Michael Hansen of the American Institutes for Research, author of “Right-Sizing the Classroom: Making the Most of Great Teachers,” Jean-Claude Brizard, senior advisor at the College Board, teacher and instructional coach Linda Donaldson Guidi, and Michael Petrilli, Fordham executive vice president.
Using Opportunity Culture models, districts are extending great teachers’ reach to more students now, without bigger classes, Bryan noted–and in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, for example, teacher-leaders make $23,000 more than the salary schedule with these models, which give all teachers opportunities for career advancement without having to leave the classroom.
But policymakers need to clear the barriers to extending great teachers’ reach, he said–and rather than focusing on the percentage of excellent teachers a district has, how about asking districts and schools to report the percentage of students who have an excellent teacher in charge of their instruction?
Imagine: An Opportunity Culture® for Teachers and Students
I spent two years teaching in a diverse, high-poverty school on the northwest side of Chicago. And I was fortunate enough to say that even with the incredible growth my students showed in my classroom—in my second year, students averaged more than four years of...