New Data, Big Results: Opportunity Culture Roles Outpace Others in Learning Growth

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—In a year of bleak NAEP outcomes, the latest data on schools using Opportunity Culture® teaching teams provides hope for scaling up student learning results nationwide.

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.**

Ninety-three percent of schools using Opportunity Culture models qualified for federal Title I funding.

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.

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 percent of state base pay, or $13,513, and as high as $25,000. 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 also 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.

Teachers in the Multi-Classroom Leader role were more than twice as likely to recommend teaching as a profession than teachers nationally (comparison data from Educators for Excellence 2024 survey). And educators in other Opportunity Culture roles were almost twice as likely to do so. Ninety-nine percent of those in Multi-Classroom Leader roles wanted Opportunity Culture implementation to continue in their schools, and 91 percent of those in all Opportunity Culture roles wanted the program to continue in their schools.

Consulting services from Public Impact scored high with clients in our most recent anonymous survey, as well, resulting in a net promoter score of 83. Fifty and over is considered “excellent” for customer net promoter scores, with over 80 being “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.

How Districts Use Opportunity Culture Models

Each school forms a design and implementation team of teachers and administrators that determines how to use Opportunity Culture roles to reach more students with excellent teaching. The design teams reallocate school budgets to permanently fund pay supplements for those in Opportunity Culture roles, in contrast to temporary grant-funded programs. In addition to these supplements, the Opportunity Culture initiative continues to support higher pay for all teachers, where budgets allow.

The Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) role is the cornerstone role, for a teacher with a track record of high-growth student learning who leads a small teaching team for a substantial pay supplement, averaging 23 percent of average teacher pay.

Their team may include those in Team Reach Teacher™ roles, for teachers who—critically in a time of teacher shortages—directly teach more students, typically without raising instructional group sizes, for more pay. This avoids filling a portion of teacher vacancies with long-term substitutes. The team gets support and MCL-guided tutoring from advanced paraprofessionals in the Reach Associate™ role.

Since 2013, more than 75 sites in 14 states have used the models, reaching more than 200,000 students in 2024–25. Since the initiative began, Opportunity Culture educators earned an estimated $78.8 million in extra pay. See the latest figures on the Opportunity Culture dashboard.

*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.

About Public Impact®

The Public Impact mission is to improve education dramatically for all students, especially students whose needs have not yet been well met. We are a team of professionals from many backgrounds, including former teachers. We are researchers, thought leaders, tool-builders, and on-the-ground consultants who work with leading education reformers.

Learn more about the Opportunity Culture initiative on the OpportunityCulture.org website. To arrange an interview with Public Impact, contact Sharon Kebschull Barrett at OpportunityCultureInfo@publicimpact.com.

Contact: Sharon Kebschull Barrett, OpportunityCultureInfo@publicimpact.com

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