Perspective | For collaborating districts, cohorts have power to address teacher shortages, student outcomes

No school wants to gamble with their students’ futures. But when teacher shortages loom — with educators leaving the profession and fewer graduates opting to make the classroom their career — schools confront tough odds. Too often, schools are trying to find great teachers to serve every student after being dealt a losing hand.

When The Innovation Project (TIP) and Public Impact joined forces in 2024 to support the inaugural cohort of the TIP Opportunity Culture Consortium, bringing together leaders from five school districts — big and small, rural and urban — to rethink school staffing models, the large conference room was abuzz with renewed hope.

We expected energy, enthusiasm, and innovation from the Wake, Rockingham, Edgecombe, Elizabeth City, and Rowan-Salisbury districts to design the implementation of roles that extend the reach of excellent teaching, pay educators more, and improve student outcomes — and that room exceeded those expectations.

We believe these districts can serve as exemplars for cross-site collaboration across North Carolina, driving innovation, cost savings, talent sharing, and learning results while addressing staffing shortages too. 

Combining the scalable, sustainable Opportunity Culture model that Public Impact created more than 10 years ago with the support to incubate innovation ideas and strategies that TIP provides to its member districts, the cohort secured state funding for advanced teaching roles to support staffing redesign. This collaboration also included a pilot of talent-sharing in which a teaching team leader in one district would support teachers in another district.

The success of the first cohort led to a 2025 cohort — with Sampson County Schools as the lead applicant and fiscal agent — this time including a teacher apprenticeships pilot.

Taking advantage of North Carolina’s bold solution

The North Carolina legislature created a bold solution to one of our state’s most pressing challenges: finding and keeping great teachers in the classroom. Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR) grants, starting in 2016, have supported districts in designing pathways for excellent educators to lead a small team of their peers while continuing to teach part of the time.

In the Opportunity Culture model, which is being used by the majority of the districts receiving ATR grants, Multi-Classroom Leaders receive significant, sustainable stipends for leading a team and taking accountability for the results of all of the team’s students. This addresses one of education’s critical needs: ensuring that every student, regardless of zip code, has access to great teaching.

North Carolina’s ATR initiative has evolved each year. The first district grantees included TIP members Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Edgecombe, and Vance, which pioneered use of Opportunity Culture roles. Subsequent grantees, many of which were also TIP districts, built on this foundation: Hertford, Cumberland, and Guilford counties, among others. 

Advanced roles that follow research-proven guidelines offer a clear path forward. We’ve seen how Multi-Classroom Leader teams provide the coaching, collaboration, accountability, and paraprofessional support to ensure consistent, high-quality instruction, including small-group tutoring for all. 

Third-party studies have found that, on average, teachers who joined Multi-Classroom Leader teams in schools using Opportunity Culture models moved from producing 50th percentile student learning growth to 77th percentile student learning growth in both reading and math. And teachers express strong satisfaction: In a 2024 national survey, 99% of educators in the Multi-Classroom Leader role and 91% of educators in all Opportunity Culture roles wanted Opportunity Culture implementation to continue. 

Setting the example: The TIP Opportunity Culture Consortium

The 2024 cohort of the TIP Opportunity Culture Consortium exemplified the power of collaboration, with Wake County Public Schools serving as the lead applicant and fiscal agent. By pooling resources and sharing insights, the consortium has accelerated progress.

The highlight is Edgecombe and Rockingham districts’ agreement for sharing a math teaching team leader to address shortages in hard-to-fill areas. A first for North Carolina, this could serve as a model for other states.

So what’s next? If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that having the right supports matters. Districts need technical assistance providers with real expertise in staffing design. They do not just need strong facilitation, but concrete processes that work. Our organizations’ partnership makes that possible.

We eagerly look forward to providing support to this year’s ATR cohort with its focus on teacher apprenticeships — building a sustainable pipeline of well-prepared and well-supported educators. 

This growing consortium prioritizes continuous improvement as it refines models based on results and shares those lessons. It’s about ensuring that this work benefits as many educators and students as possible across the state, so no district leaders have to gamble with students’ futures ever again.