|
To view this email as a web page, click here. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
FEBRUARY 21, 2025 |
|
|
LATEST DATA
Opportunity Culture Roles Produce Learning Growth Results—Within Budget
In a year of bleak NAEP outcomes nationwide, the latest data on schools using Opportunity Culture® teaching teams provides hope for scaling up student learning results nationwide. |
|
|
|
2023–24 Opportunity Culture® Outcomes Show High Growth in Title I Schools |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Title I schools that had Multi-Classroom Leader® teaching teams for at least four years and were reaching all students in core subjects in 2023–24 were 83% percent more likely to make high growth schoolwide than Title I schools without these Opportunity Culture teams.* |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Title I schools using these teams for at least one year and reaching all students schoolwide in 2023–24 were 61% percent more likely to make high growth schoolwide than Title I schools without the teams.** |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
93 percent of schools using Opportunity Culture models qualified for federal Title I funding. |
|
|
|
|
*24 Title I schools for which growth data were available, affecting more than 500 teachers and over 13,000 students.
**41 schools for which growth data were available, affecting more than 900 teachers and over 22,000 students.
146 Title I schools in the data set had four or more years of experience with the roles. The prominent teacher coaching
meta-analysis by Brown and Harvard Universities considers programs of over 100 teachers to be large. |
|
|
|
Both experience with Multi-Classroom Leader® teams and the percentage of students reached by them affected schoolwide outcomes.
Title I schools that had several years of experience with these teams, which can include new educator roles, and reached students schoolwide showed the best growth results—boosting their odds of high-growth learning schoolwide by 83 percent over schools without the roles.
|
|
Schools that reached the most students with excellent teaching through Multi-Classroom Leader teams and sustained their commitment to these roles for 4 years or more were the most likely to achieve high growth schoolwide. |
|
Reaching students mattered more than just gaining years of experience with the roles. Including all students increased the odds of high-growth learning schoolwide by 61 percent, while just gaining experience for four or more years boosted the odds of high growth by 26 percent.
Multi-Classroom Leader roles are filled by excellent teachers with a record of high-growth results, and their teams may include teachers who extend their reach to more students and advanced paraprofessionals who focus on small-group tutoring during the school day. These roles all receive higher pay that is sustainable through reallocations of regular budgets. Recommended pay levels are higher in Title I schools to attract and keep staff in these schools, which serve more students from low-income families than non-Title I schools. Pay supplements for the Multi-Classroom Leader role average 23% of state base pay; the supplements are making it possible for some teachers to reach six-figure salaries.
In 2024–25, 630 U.S. schools are implementing these roles, with hundreds more scheduled to do so; Opportunity Culture educators are serving over 200,000 students across a dozen states. On average, participating schools are reaching about 56 percent of their students with Opportunity Culture teaching teams.
“Schools, systems, and states have far more potential for student learning results—if they reach more students,” said Bryan C. Hassel, co-president of Public Impact and co-founder of the Opportunity Culture initiative.
A McKinsey analysis indicates that learning results like these boost the economy substantially. This adds jobs and tax revenues to fund national, state, and local priorities. McKinsey included Opportunity Culture models in its Covid learning recovery recommendations.
Ector County ISD in Texas was one of nine school districts highlighted in the recent Stanford-Harvard-Dartmouth Education Recovery Scorecard for its outlier learning gains, and was named K-12 Dive’s 2024 District of the Year. The district uses Opportunity Culture models in about half of its schools. A Texas Tech study in 2021 found strong student learning growth in that district’s Opportunity Culture implementation, examining teacher-level data. A prior study by the CALDER Center also found learning gains in other districts. On average, these two prior studies found that the models added an extra half year of learning annually in reading and math.
Educators also expressed very strong satisfaction with Opportunity Culture implementation in 2023–24. |
|
|
|
Educators Express Satisfaction in Annual, Anonymous Survey (2023–24) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Educators in the Multi-Classroom Leader® role were more than twice as likely to recommend teaching as a profession than teachers nationally.* And educators in other Opportunity Culture® roles were almost twice as likely to do so. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
99% of those in Multi-Classroom Leader roles wanted Opportunity Culture implementation to continue in their schools. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
91% of those in all Opportunity Culture roles wanted the program to continue in their schools. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pay supplements for the MCL role averaged 23% of average state base pay, or $13,513, and as high as $25,000. Pay supplements must be funded within regular school budgets for a school to become a Certified Opportunity Culture School™. |
|
|
|
|
*Comparison data from Educators for Excellence 2024 survey. |
|
|
|
Consulting services from Public Impact scored high with clients in our most recent anonymous survey, as well: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Net promoter score of clients for Public Impact® team. 50 and over is considered “excellent” for customer net promoter scores. Over 80 is “world class.” |
|
|
|
|
This standout net promoter score followed the introduction of new quality standards in 2023–24, which require schools new to using Opportunity Culture models to become certified—based on data-backed elements—in order to use the initiative’s name and role titles. Hundreds of schools became provisionally certified based on 2023–24 design and implementation, announced in fall 2024.
In the past three years, Public Impact and supportive funders invested in substantially decreasing the cost of the transition to new staffing models through its new design portal, which also captures data about what staffing and pay designs work in different contexts. In 2025–26, Public Impact and funders will be investing in data-gathering to understand how the use of high-quality instructional materials and methods can further boost student learning outcomes, in addition to innovative roles and increased small-group tutoring made possible through Multi-Classroom Leader teams. |
Interested in bringing these results to your district or state? |
|
States and school systems now have the option of Self-Driven Design™ with access to the Opportunity Culture portal, and can enhance that as needed with a low-cost coaching package or live, virtual design workshops (below) to collaborate with Public Impact experts on the most challenging aspects of design for a relatively low cost. Many districts also still choose more intensive support, but they join a cohort with other districts to reduce the overall cost of making the shift to Opportunity Culture models. |
| GET STARTED |
|
|
REGISTER
Staffing Design Workshops
These live, virtual workshops provide an affordable, time-conserving way to get strategic staffing designed. Begin with the district-level workshop on March 3 and 4 for department leaders; the district team also gets eight coaching calls and online support, plus full access to the Opportunity Culture portal. Follow that with the school-level workshop on April 8 and 9, which will focus on the school’s designs, plus two coaching calls for schools to finalize their plans, full access to the Opportunity Culture portal during the design phase, and guidance on gaining provisional-level Opportunity Culture certification status. |
| GET STARTED |
|
|
|
|
RECENTLY FROM PUBLIC IMPACT
A Sure Fix for NAEP Woes
The latest NAEP scores are no surprise, despite educators’ hard work to support students, but this is not just an educational crisis; it’s an economic one, write Public Impact Co-Presidents Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel.
Education outcomes determine students’ job prospects, which affect local and state economies—and tax revenues. Learning boosts add to public funding, while shortfalls drain public funding. Whatever you care about, K–12 learning results could pay for it, and support students and their communities.
What is the sure fix? Choose changes with the maximum average outcomes. Maximum average analysis considers the results of a change for all students in your purview, including those left out when a change is not scalable or sustainable. The best options optimize results times reach—without running out of money, time, talent, or other scarce resources. And they do so this year, next year, and beyond—so students benefit over and over, not just for a short time, only to slide back later. |
| READ MORE |
|
|
|
|
|
Congratulations to the schools in Carlsbad, NM; Chatham, Columbus, Nash, Rockingham, and Elizabeth City-Pasquotank districts in NC; and Madison Parish, LA, that are the first nationally to receive both certified and validated status for their Opportunity Culture implementation! See the full list here. |
|
|
|
Where are you on the strategic staffing learning path? Start with a free info session, or check out a site visit or deeper dive to the design principles. Find your spot on the Opportunity Culture learning path! |
| LEARN MORE |
|
|
|
|
