Multimedia

The Digital Learning Day promotes the use of technology to support K–12 teachers in public schools. Through this initiative, the Alliance for Excellent Education draws attention to the successful technological innovation in classrooms across the country. The first Digital Learning Day touched the lives of 2 million students through tens of thousands of educators. Entrepreneurial districts and schools that have been particularly successful with technological teaching methodology are brought to center stage at this event.

This Public Impact video explains how excellent teachers can close achievement gaps, and why schools must reach more students with these teachers. It also introduces new models that let schools pay teachers up to 40 percent more and teacher-leaders up to 130 percent more, within budget. 

In this TED talk, Daniel Pink, career analyst and former Al Gore speechwriter, dissects the puzzle of motivation, starting with the fact that most social scientists know the answer to this puzzle while most managers do not. Pink explains that traditional rewards are not always as effective as we think they are. True motivation can be defined by three elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He emphasizes this by providing anecdotes coupled with facts. 

This infographic by Public Impact summarizes the ideas of “Opportunity Culture” and illustrates ways schools can use job redesign and technology to put excellent teachers in charge of students’ learning. 

Teachers in the United States have historically had lower average salaries than their peers with similar educational backgrounds, with 62 percent of teachers requiring a second job outside of the classroom—such as tutoring, mowing lawns, selling stereos, or bartending—to be able to afford to teach. The Teacher Salary Project aims to raise awareness about the need to provide more attractive compensation to attract and retain effective teachers.

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is an organization that provides resources and tools that aim to change the way people, time, and money are used in urban education to dramatically improve student learning. Resources on their webpage on teaching innovation include publications and case studies that focus on rethinking and redesigning teacher compensation systems to attract, reward, and retain talent and ideas on how to restructure the teaching job to emphasize teacher teams, differentiated roles, and opportunities to develop and increase impact.

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is an organization that provides resources and tools that aim to change the way people, time, and money are used in urban education to dramatically improve student learning. Resources on ERS’s webpage on teaching innovation include publications and case studies that focus on rethinking and redesigning teacher compensation systems to attract, reward, and retain talent and ideas on how to restructure the teaching job to emphasize teacher teams, differentiated roles, and opportunities to develop and increase impact.

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is an organization that provides resources and tools that aim to change the way people, time, and money are used in urban education to dramatically improve student learning. Resources on ERS’s webpage on teaching innovation include publications and case studies that focus on rethinking and redesigning teacher compensation systems to attract, reward, and retain talent and ideas on how to restructure the teaching job to emphasize teacher teams, differentiated roles, and opportunities to develop and increase impact.

The increasing urgency to design schools the help students better achieve combined with budget reductions have made it increasingly important to make smart and efficient investments. This Education Resource Strategies report, however, finds that the opposite is occurring. Multiple school districts have practices that perpetuate existing school structures that don’t work and are creating barriers to the development of excellent schools. This guide offers guidance for school districts to fix these severe misalignments so that effective school designs may be implemented.