Uplift Education to Pay Salary Incentives for Effective Teaching in Dallas County

School districts across the state are grappling with a shortage of qualified teachers. This has led to more novice and uncertified teachers entering the profession in Texas, which, according to studies, can lead to months of learning loss for students if these instructors lack adequate classroom experience and support.

In response to these challenges, Uplift Education has implemented a strategic staffing initiative intended to provide excellent teaching to more students, known as Opportunity Culture. Developed over a decade ago by education consultancy Public Impact, this initiative has helped schools across the United States redesign their staffing structures to offer higher and differentiated salaries to teachers, strengthen teacher development and cultivate teacher pipelines in order to ultimately increase student success.

“Uplift is committed to providing our scholars the best education,” said Uplift Education Director of Talent Pathways Chloe LaFrance. “A huge part of that is ensuring we retain our top-tier teachers.”

Opportunity Culture puts excellent teachers in front of more students while offering higher pay through a multi-classroom leader model. This model uses a data-backed evaluation to identify highly effective educators. Those top-tier educators spend half of each school day teaching students and half coaching small groups of educators. Multi-classroom leaders observe classroom practices, provide constructive feedback and facilitate professional development, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. In recognition of these leadership responsibilities, multi-classroom leaders receive pay supplements averaging 20 percent of their salaries, with some earning supplements as high as 50 percent of their pay. The regular school budget covers the new pay scale.

This model also enables diverse teaching configurations, such as team teaching, co-teaching and deployment of paraprofessionals and teacher residents to enhance instruction. This approach has been shown to improve teacher retention, promote diversity in the teaching corps and increase educator salaries. By hiring for various roles and responsibilities, schools can better address the needs of their students and create an environment where all educators can thrive.

To implement Opportunity Culture with fidelity, schools have to restructure budgets and rigorously evaluate educators. Schools must also redesign schedules to include time for teacher planning, coaching and collaboration. These efforts require a great deal of leadership and ingenuity, but the work has resulted in more equitable access to effective educators for over 150,000 students across the country.

Thankfully, the Texas education policy landscape supports this kind of innovation. For example, the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) rewards districts for locally designing an evaluation system for educator effectiveness and provides major salary increases for teachers who receive designations under those systems. The state also provides funding for the Additional Day School Year (ADSY), which adds up to 30 additional days of instructional time to school calendars. Both initiatives can be used to roll out Opportunity Culture to identify and reward effective multi-classroom leaders, provide additional time for team collaboration and ultimately increase student learning.

Students at Uplift’s Fort Worth campuses are already benefitting from these mutually reinforcing policies. There, teachers with TIA designations serve as multi-classroom leaders. Now, Uplift leaders intend to expand Opportunity Culture to their Dallas County campuses, with support from the Educator Effectiveness team here at Commit.

“The pilot program in Fort Worth has generated a lot of excitement among our school leaders, and we’re eager to see the positive effects ripple across our Dallas campuses,” said Uplift Education Director of Talent Pathways Chloe LaFrance. “This expansion will allow more scholars to benefit from the expertise and leadership of our multi-classroom leaders, and we are confident it will make a lasting impact.”

Commit will provide five Uplift Education schools in Dallas County financial assistance and collaborative learning spaces to facilitate the strategic staffing model. Analysis from McKinsey & Company suggests that the achievement gains attributable to Opportunity Culture models would translate into average lifetime earnings increases of $100,000 to $130,000 per student. This strategy can be a crucial component of progress toward our True North Goal of increasing living wage attainment. We hope other districts in Dallas County and across the state will consider adopting the model as they seek new and innovative ways to recruit and retain top teaching talent.

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