Rethinking Teaching: New Ways to Staff America’s Schools

Why America’s One-Teacher Classroom Needs to Change

American classrooms in 2026, in which one teacher instructs 20 to 30 students, are strikingly similar to those from 100 years ago. Most teachers, like a century ago, have two main pathways to advance in their profession. The first option is remaining in the classroom, incrementally increasing their paycheck over decades. The second is to leave the classroom either for administrative roles in schools or to enter a new field entirely. However, there is a third option: Strategic staffing models allow teachers to grow in their careers without leaving the classroom. This explainer outlines what it means to rethink teaching through effective strategic staffing models and which organizations are leading this work.

The good news is that some 84% of educators want to remain in an instructional role, according to a poll conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Gallup with support from the Walton Family Foundation. However, nearly 1 in 7 educators leave their classrooms every year amid limited opportunities for growth in salary and responsibility. Ensuring that students have access to highly effective teachers is even more pressing as recent NAEP results show alarming trends in student achievement. Researchers from Harvard and Stanford noted that students are in a learning recession in their 2025 Education Scorecard. Average math and reading scores in both 4th and 8th grade NAEP are still significantly lower than in 2019. The structure of the teaching job can be better designed to enable effective educators to combat these trends.

What Are Strategic Staffing Models?

Strategic staffing describes new approaches to educator roles that offer teachers leadership and coaching opportunities, differentiated pay, and schedules that promote team collaboration. This method for staffing schools can support novice teachers while also providing the most effective educators with career development opportunities. Well-designed strategic staffing programs increase student achievement and improve teacher retention.

School context influences which elements of strategic staffing are leveraged. In one school, strategic staffing could look like a history teacher spending half of the day instructing classes and half of the day coaching other history teachers. In another, an English, a math, and a science teacher might share a roster of 115 students, reshaping the daily schedule around student-led STEM projects.

BPC, as part of its National Talent Strategy, recognizes the critical role of teachers in improving student outcomes and the need to strengthen the teacher pipeline. While teacher roles and compensation are primarily state and local in nature, the federal government provides significant funding to support teachers. States and localities can better use federal funds, such as Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), to support investments in high-impact activities like strategic staffing.

Two leading programs helping districts and schools design and implement strategic staffing models are Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture and Mary Lou Fulton College’s Next Education Workforce at Arizona State University. Both models reimagine traditional teaching responsibilities to give teachers new opportunities.

Opportunity Culture

Public Impact released a report in 2009 calling for a new approach to teacher staffing where the most effective teachers could reach more students through redesigned roles. They named the approach Opportunity Culture and officially launched the model in 2013.

Key components of Opportunity Culture are: differentiated teacher roles and pay, expanded reach of effective teachers, and small-group tutoring. By the end of 2025, more than 1,150 schools were using this approach, most of which were eligible for Title I funds that serve low-income communities.1 A study examining 44 Opportunity Culture schools showed student performance improved across math courses. After implementing Opportunity Culture, the teacher vacancy rate decreased 17 percentage points in Ector County, TX, schools while Desert Willow Elementary School in New Mexico posted state-leading literacy proficiency results.

Opportunity Culture school designs reimagine teaching with roles such as:

Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) is a teacher with a demonstrated record of effective teaching who splits their time between their own classroom and time for non-teaching responsibilities. MCLs coach teams of teachers at their school site, typically in the same content area that they teach. MCL teachers are held accountable for the outcomes of their own roster of students and the students of teachers they coach, expanding the reach of effective teachers. On average, MCLs make an additional 20% of their base pay and provide nearly a half-year of additional learning for students.

Team Reach teachers, like MCLs, have a track record of effectiveness. Team Reach educators take responsibility for additional students by taking additional class periods or tutoring groups. Team Reach teachers receive direct support and guidance from their MCL.

Reach Associates, or paraprofessionals, are educators who work in classrooms alongside Team Reach teachers and MCLs. Reach Associates lead small group instruction and support the larger rosters of Team Reach teachers. Reach Associates also receive direct support from MCLs.

From Opportunity Culture

Next Education Workforce

The Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University established its own approach to strategic staffing called the Next Education Workforce (ASU NEW). This model emphasizes teams that bring teachers with different areas of expertise together. With more teachers working with the same roster of students, these teaching teams have greater flexibility to meet student learning needs. Teams can adjust between large-group instruction and specialized small-group instruction. ASU NEW school models are located across the country, but are concentrated in Arizona, where the model launched in 2019.

Team teaching is the defining feature of ASU NEW models. On a given day, a team of three to five ASU NEW educators may lead large-group instruction, co-teach interdisciplinary lessons, or facilitate skills-based review lessons for groups of select students. There is not one “teacher of record,” which has defined classrooms for the last century. The shared responsibility allows teachers to reorganize groups of students based on projects, student performance, or availability of partner educators from the community. In other words, student needs drive the groupings. All ASU NEW models use educator teams, though schedules and team sizes vary.

Differentiated teacher roles, like those seen in Opportunity Culture models, are implemented in some, but not all ASU NEW schools. At Kyrene de las Manitas Innovation Academy, students are served by regular classroom teachers, educator residents (teachers in training), and a teacher executive designer who plans lessons and guides the team.

After implementing ASU NEW models, Mesa Public Schools in Arizona found that teamed teachers were more likely to be rated highly effective. Mesa schools also experienced a 50% decrease in teacher vacancies in the two years following their implementation of strategic staffing. Additionally, students taught by teamed teachers with the ASU NEW model received the equivalent of 1.4 extra months of reading instruction per school year compared to their peers not taught by teamed teachers.2

From ASU Next Education Workforce

Conclusion

Strategic staffing models are designed to enable schools to work better for teachers and students but require reimagining classrooms while learning is happening. These approaches to staffing support teacher advancement and combat declining student performance. While initial evidence shows that some models result in improved teacher job satisfaction and stronger academic performance from students, continued research can raise awareness among more school leaders and deepen our understanding of what elements of strategic staffing are most beneficial for teachers and students.

Opportunity Culture. “Opportunity Culture Stats” Last updated June 18, 2026. Available at: https://www.opportunityculture.org/opportunity-culture-stats/ ︎

Next Education Workforce. “Briefing Document on Next Education Workforce Research Outcomes.” Last updated May 1, 2025. Available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r9d4Ss4Sxg7ULoGiswknC6SyTDL8QQL4FBoDRt_14U4/edit ︎

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