Unlocking the Potential of Team-Based Staffing: A Guide for School and System Leaders

A practical approach to strategic school-staffing reforms that benefit both educators and students In Unlocking the Potential of Team-Based Staffing, Brent W. Maddin, R. Lennon Audrain, Lisa Maresso Wyatt, and Kaycee Salmacia make a persuasive case for redesigning the education workforce to facilitate deeper and more personalized learning experiences in K– 2 schools. They advocate disrupting the traditional one-teacher, one-classroom model in favor of team-based school-staffing models in which multiple educators are responsible for rosters of students. Maddin, Audrain, Wyatt, and Salmacia show that these innovative staffing models are associated with positive outcomes for both educators and students. Based on early evidence from the Next Education Workforce team, they demonstrate that strategic team-staffing models can increase educator job satisfaction, enable schools to best utilize human capital, and make complex, sought-after pedagogical approaches such as interest-based, differentiated learning more doable in resource-limited settings. The book offers school leaders concrete actions for the successful design and launch of team-based staffing. It presents clear guidance for navigating implementation challenges, including change management, instructional scheduling, and common infrastructural issues ranging from family communication to rethinking the physical spaces within schools to better support team-based instruction.