Advanced Teaching Roles in North Carolina

Empowering North Carolina districts and educators to design new teaching roles that provide advancement opportunities, improved professional development, and greater support for student achievement.

Treating Teachers as Professionals: Advanced Roles Models

Check out Advanced Roles in Action:

In 2016, North Carolina launched the Advanced Teaching Roles Initiative to:

Enable outstanding teachers across NC to extend their reach to more students without leaving the classroom,
Recognize teacher leaders with higher compensation,
Provide developing teachers with embedded, personalized professional development,
Allow principals to expand their leadership capabilities, and – most importantly –
Support improved student outcomes.

Today, there are 15 districts taking part in the Advanced Roles Initiative:

Advanced Teaching Roles and Student Success: Results from One Model

While each participating district is empowered to create and design their own Advanced Teaching Roles model, many of North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles districts have implemented the Opportunity Culture™ model, which empowers teachers to work in teams by creating embedded teacher leadership opportunities. The impact on student performance thus far has been impressive. Participating schools are more likely to meet or exceed growth expectations for students than North Carolina schools not implementing the model (see chart to the right).

Additionally, a 2018 independent study of Opportunity Culture™ found that students who were taught by a multi-classroom leader (in the Opportunity Culture model) experienced larger gains in math than their peers in non-Opportunity Culture™ classrooms. In 2019-20, eight North Carolina school districts were designing or implementing Advanced Teaching Roles models through Opportunity Culture™.

What We Know So Far: Components of Best-in-Class Advanced Teaching Roles Models

High-quality advanced teaching roles models are:

Implemented in districts that opt-in to the model;
Explicitly designed to increase student achievement;
Developed locally with significant educator and community input;
Designed to empower principals to align teaching skills with student needs;

Capable of recognizing that educators have varying professional aspirations at different phases in their careers (lattices, not ladders);
Financially sustainable within current budgets and offer substantial salary increases to advanced roles teachers for leading instructional teams and/or extending their reach to more students.