Redesigning schools

Redesigning Schools to Extend Excellent Teachers’ Reach

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How can every student have excellent teachers every year? Extending the reach of excellent teachers requires schools to redesign jobs, use technology in new ways, or both.
 Here we present new school models to get the job done.

• See a table of school models, with links to more detail.
• Go to detailed school models.

The models must meet our Reach Extension Principles, for whole schools or individual courses.

Reach Extension Principles

Explicitly and rigorously aim to:

1. Reach more children successfully with excellent teachers who produce high-growth learning and more.
2. Pay excellent teachers—and eventually all teachers—far more for reaching more students.
3. Achieve permanent financial sustainability, after transition, by funding new models within regular budgets.
4. Include roles that develop other teachers, and school-hour planning and collaboration time, so all teachers can produce excellent outcomes immediately.
5. Match teachers’ formal authority and accountability to their responsibility for peer and student success, clarifying their power to lead people and manage resources.

By making the right changes, schools can provide all teachers with career advancement opportunities.
The models focus on extending excellent teachers’ reach in ways that free teachers’ time, create clear accountability and authority for teachers, and powerfully reward teachers by paying them far more for achieving excellence, alone or in teams.
Most models involve team-teaching that lets all teachers earn more and gain collaboration and development time during school hours, with leadership opportunities for excellent teachers that let them stay in the classroom—so that good and great teachers work together to bring excellent instruction to all students. Some models also make part-time work, reduced hours, and flexible schedules possible.
We organized the models around two key dimensions:

• Where is the teacher?
  • In person, teaching face to face in a school and/or leading other teachers; or
  • Remotely located, with on-site monitors’ help. Remotely located teachers use webcams, online whiteboards, email, and other methods that let teachers communicate personally with students, at times convenient for all.
• How is the teacher’s reach extended to more students? Excellent teachers can:
  • Specialize in the most crucial subjects and most difficult teaching roles
  • Swap technology—online digital instruction—for some of their teaching time, enough time that excellent teachers can teach more students
  • Lead other teachers, and co-teach with them, with authority to select, assign roles, develop, and evaluate the team.
  • Have larger classes (within reason, and by a teacher’s choice). Most schools will not want to do this unless in combination with other models that can simultaneously decrease instructional group sizes.

Schools can combine models to make the best use of excellent teachers’ time and to put teachers in roles that are best for each person.
Changing schools this way sets up a virtuous cycle of selectivity, opportunity, and pay that leads to excellent outcomes for students.
Some of these models might look familiar. Some schools are already trying them, and we have begun a series of case studies. Please help us improve the models by sharing your stories on our Feedback page. See our complete set of tools for school design teams.