Exceptional Educators

Research shows that teachers are the most important factor in a student’s education, and teacher quality and variability across and within schools impacts both short and long-term outcomes, including income level as an adult. But the effects of COVID, including supporting students’ socioemotional wellbeing, addressing learning loss, and taking on extra work because of staffing shortages—all while navigating shifting local and state policies—have led to increased stress among teachers. According to one RAND study, approximately 60 percent of teachers report that they are burnt out.

Though more localized than national, staffing shortages have negatively affected educators and the students who are already furthest behind. More than a quarter of educators stated that their schools needed to cancel or reschedule professional development provided by outside external vendors because they couldn’t find enough substitute teachers, and one out of two school leaders say their stress level is so high that they’re considering leaving the profession. Overdeck Family Foundation grantees such as Instruction Partners are providing targeted capacity-building supports and direct-to-teacher activities to meet the needs of educators during this challenging time—particularly new leaders who need increased support.

Instructional resources are the second biggest in-school factor impacting student achievement. Yet we know that not enough students have access to the high-quality instructional materials that would support their learning: only one-quarter of teachers reported using fully-aligned ELA materials at the elementary level, and one-third reported doing so at the middle school level. Additionally, the current fragmentation of data sources in school districts means that there is no one way for teachers to know what is working and how they can best support student learning. This also makes it more difficult for leaders to support teachers in their practices or in their staffing.

Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture, an Overdeck Family Foundation-funded initiative, found that teachers previously performing on average at the 50th percentile produced student learning gains equivalent to teachers in the top quartile in math and nearly that in reading when placed on teams led by multi-classroom leaders with a record of high student learning growth. Next Education Workforce at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, another Overdeck Family Foundation grantee that focuses on team-based staffing strategies, found that 75 percent of team-based teachers report being satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, compared to 66 percent in non-team-based models.

Eighty-five percent of teachers report that tech tools will play a bigger role in the current school year than they did prior to the pandemic, and almost half of teachers and 42 percent of parents support online learning for instruction at times when school cannot be open in person. Recently, virtual delivery of professional learning has played a key role in grantees growing their impact and reach. Approximately 85 percent of Teaching Lab’s participants reported satisfaction with the overall quality of their virtual professional learning courses, with 87 percent reporting that they would apply what they learned. Additionally, New Leaders’ fully virtual Learning Hub platform received increased participant satisfaction from 79 percent to 94 percent.