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In Carlsbad, N.M., a tiny district in the southeastern corner of the state, nine of its 12 schools have turned teacher assignments upside-down, inviting their best teachers to coach a team of colleagues, model lessons and take direct responsibility for the achievement of every student the team serves.

In exchange, each teacher-leader earns substantially more 鈥� without leaving the classroom.

The idea grew out of an emerging staffing model called , now in its fourth year in the Carlsbad Municipal School District. It鈥檚 reshaping how schools there and elsewhere deploy teachers.

Part of a broader movement sometimes called , its premise is simple: Instead of assuming that every classroom needs its own solitary teacher, with skills roughly equal to the person in the next room, schools identify teachers with a track record of strong student growth, putting them in charge of a large group of students or educators 鈥� or both.聽

In one model, a 鈥渃ore team鈥� of two to six skilled teachers 鈥� at least one of whom is a special education teacher 鈥� teach classes of 50 to 100 students, with assistance from aides and volunteers. 

Since Opportunity Culture emerged more than a decade ago, it has spread to more than . At its core is a teacher known as a Multi-Classroom Leader or MCL 鈥� a master teacher who takes on formal responsibility for coaching up to eight colleagues while keeping their own classroom. They get a bump in salary that can be significant, said Allison Hervol, who oversees curriculum and instruction for Carlsbad. 鈥淪ome of our MCLs make close to, if not more than, what their principal makes,鈥� she said. 

The key is that these teachers aren’t pulled out of the classroom entirely. An MCL coaching three teachers might still teach for four hours a day. That avoids creating teacher vacancies in an already tight labor market.

The structure grew out of a model developed by the North Carolina-based nonprofit around 2013, but it has only recently earned wider attention. Before 2013, Public Impact was 鈥渁 multi-topic consulting and research organization,鈥� said , the organization鈥檚 co-president. It soon pivoted to trying to optimize teacher roles, time and pay.

, an assistant professor and Head of Innovation and Policy Initiatives at Arizona State University, is careful to note that the idea of strategic staffing isn’t actually new, pointing to team-teaching experiments dating to the 1960s and ’70s, when districts short on trained staff began recruiting 鈥渉omeroom moms鈥� to help manage classroom data 鈥� a role that eventually evolved into the modern . 

What is new, he said, is the technology available to make those teams work well: tools for grouping students, tracking data and designing roles that didn’t exist 40 or 50 years ago

of strategic staffing insists on at least two certified educators at the core of a team, with paraeducators, community members or part-time teachers added as needed. Most importantly, he said, staffing decisions must map directly onto a school’s actual instructional priorities: If a school wants to raise math achievement, for instance, it should build math teams.

While it seems self-evident, he said, the key is to have priorities in the first place.

鈥楢 mentor teacher isn’t anything new鈥� 

In December 2023, the consulting firm , which helped popularize new teacher models, laid out the pressures pushing schools toward them. On the student side, it pointed to steep pandemic-era drops in NAEP scores, including an eight-point decline in eighth-grade reading between 2019 and 2022. 

On the staffing side, it found that teachers were earning about 24% less than similarly educated peers, with nearly one in five working a second job. Giving effective teachers more pay, more influence and a better reason to stick around, it concluded, could help solve both problems.

By then, Opportunity Culture had already reached more than 800 schools, encompassing over 5,400 teachers and 150,000 students. The data also suggested that the model could turn average teachers into excellent 鈥� or nearly excellent 鈥� ones. 

And it proved popular with teachers: 97% of MCLs and 87% of teammates wanted to keep using Opportunity Culture the following year.

MCLs earn roughly 20% above typical teacher pay, according to Public Impact鈥檚 Hassel.

The model has grown well beyond a handful of pilot districts: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina now runs it in 179 schools, amounting to nearly every building.

Carlsbad鈥檚 Hervol said keeping proven teachers in the classroom not only preserves their direct impact on students 鈥� it also builds trust among teachers, who would rather be coached by a colleague than a trainer from central office. 

The district also paired the rollout with Doug Lemov’s framework, with teachers retaining freedom over their own rooms.

The results, Hervol said, have been hard to ignore. At one elementary school, fourth-grade reading proficiency climbed from around 35% to 68%, with higher scores at 鈥渁lmost all of our campuses鈥� that have implemented the Opportunity Culture framework. 

In North Carolina, which a decade ago began piloting a teacher-leader program, 76% of participating schools showed higher growth scores on state tests, compared to 45% of comparison schools. And teacher turnover dropped to just 1% to 3% in the pilot schools, compared with 7.5% to 9% statewide.

鈥業t’s really working鈥�

In her first year as an MCL, Michele Cope coached eight teachers at her Carlsbad middle school and said more than 61% of eighth graders scored proficient on New Mexico’s state test before, up from 18%.

What changed wasn’t any single technique as much as consistency across each building. 鈥淭hink about every teacher in your hallway using the same structured supports, regardless of what they taught,鈥� said Cope, who now helps lead training and retention efforts for the district. 

Misty Hightower, another former Carlsbad teacher who now coordinates Opportunity Culture programs in elementary schools district-wide, thought back to her first year as a coach. She was coaching eight teachers, and one colleague, a third-grade teacher, was 鈥渘ot interested in it at all.鈥� 

But at the end of the year the teacher saw his student performance data and something shifted. Once he saw that consistency worked 鈥� that 鈥渢he kids would actually learn if that consistency was there,鈥� he became a believer.

Two years later, he applied to be an MCL and eventually took over for Hightower when she moved into her new job. 鈥淚t clicked with him,鈥� she said, 鈥渁nd he absolutely loves his job.鈥�

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