The Opportunity Culture Strategy
Looking for a high-impact, sustainable, cost-effective, proven way to give all students access to excellent teaching and all educators access to outstanding career opportunities?
Opportunity Culture innovative staffing models help pre-K–12 districts and schools restructure to extend the reach of excellent teaching to more students, for more pay, within recurring school budgets—backed up by 10 years of student learning growth and educator-pleasing results!
How Opportunity Culture Models Work
In each Opportunity Culture school:
A group of teachers and administrators determines how to use the Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) role and other teaching team roles to reach all students with excellent teaching and small-group instruction and pay teachers more. Opportunity Culture models provide customizable designs based on a proven framework.
Each MCL leads a small teaching team, providing guidance and frequent on-the-job coaching while continuing to teach, often by leading small-group instruction. Research shows that when teachers increase small-group teaching and tutoring, student learning surges.
Accountable for the results of all students in the team, MCLs earn supplements averaging 20 percent (and up to 50 percent) of teacher pay, within the regular school budget.
In the majority of schools, some MCL team members serve in the Team Reach Teacher and Reach Associate roles, reaching more students, for more pay, with increased small-group learning, all with MCL guidance and support.
Schools redesign schedules to provide additional school-day time for teacher planning, coaching, and collaboration.
Opportunity Culture leadership and paid team roles have been shown to more than double the number of teachers producing high-growth student learning. Students gain an extra half-year of learning growth on average.
The Opportunity Culture Principles
Teams of teachers & school leaders must choose and tailor models to:
Reach more students with excellent teachers and their teams
Pay teachers more for extending their reach
Fund pay within regular budgets
Provide protected in-school time and clarity about how to use it for planning, collaboration, and development
Match authority and accountability to each person’s responsibilities
Similar principles apply to teams of principals and district/network leaders
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.
—Teacher on MCL Team
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Why Districts Use Opportunity Culture Models
Districts join the national Opportunity Culture initiative to address student learning growth that is too low for equitable outcomes, especially in high-need schools, and to address staffing shortages that have grown to affect many schools.
Opportunity Culture innovative staffing designs address shortages and boost learning. Innovative staffing means thinking differently about instructional roles and available funding to improve academics, creating new career options for teachers and addressing persistent teaching vacancies.
Opportunity Culture models offer schools new tools that include high-paying advanced team roles, improved support for new teachers, and staffing models that do not require filling every teacher vacancy to ensure that students have access to excellent instruction.
See some of the education research groups, advocacy organizations, and federal and state offices that suggest Opportunity Culture models as a strategy to consider.
Hear what past and present Opportunity Culture district leaders have to say:
“We see this as a strategic opportunity to change teaching and learning in our schools."
—North Carolina 2020 Superintendent of the Year Anthony Jackson
"Is [Opportunity Culture implementation] the right thing to do for our kids? When we look at our data, we know it is."
—North Carolina 2022 Superintendent of the Year Valerie Bridges
“We have MCLs and Opportunity Culture folks that are coming from other districts because of this opportunity, and then our own people, certainly it retains them as teachers.”
—Texas Region 18 Superintendent of the Year Scott Muri
“I am so excited for Klein ISD to be a part of this Opportunity Culture initiative. This is one more way to help ensure that every student has access to excellent and equitable learning opportunities.”
—Texas Region 4 Superintendent of the Year Jenny McGown
“Anything we can do to bring new and exciting ideas in teacher training is welcomed in Aldine ISD, and we are honored to be one of seven school districts in Texas selected for this prestigious teacher training program.”
—K–12 Dive Superintendent of the Year LaTonya Goffney
In Districts and Charter Schools Across the U.S.
More districts and charter school organizations—large and small, rural and urban—make the Opportunity Culture commitment every year. See where they are!
How Public Impact Works with Districts
Public Impact offers several price points for districts to create their own Opportunity Culture designs.
Intensive Co-Design
Best for districts that need full consulting support to manage change and co-design Opportunity Culture plans with Public Impact
Focused Co-Design
Best for districts with capacity to manage change but needing technical guidance—optional add-on supports available
Self-Driven Design
Best for districts that can manage their own design and implementation in the School Excellence Portal
Professional Learning
Supporting school design and Opportunity Culture roles for teachers, teacher-leaders, principals, staff, and administrators
All service models will include the option for official Opportunity Culture certification.
Data Dashboard
Every year, we publish a data dashboard to track the growth of the Opportunity Culture initiative—including the number of participating schools and districts, student impact, and statistics on the extra pay Opportunity Culture educators have earned.
We use those dashboard results, annual, anonymous surveys of Opportunity Culture educators, and our experience working directly with districts on Opportunity Culture implementation to continually refine Opportunity Culture design and professional learning materials and guidance.
2022 marked the beginning of a new era of innovation, with Public Impact expanding paid roles on MCL teams; designing Multi-School Leadership, remotely located MCL roles, embedded tutoring, and lower-cost services to schools; and the milestone of reaching over 150K students in one year.
Our clients have rated us in the “excellent” zone, on average, in every year since the annual Opportunity Culture survey began.
Our work with Public Impact has just been phenomenal—the partnership has been great. …The resources that they have provided for our team have just been out of this world, and I applaud and appreciate just the intentionality of the process, because I think it’s helped us move a lot faster than we would have.
—North Carolina superintendent
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