Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Research indicates that effective teachers are critical to raising student achievement. However, there is little evidence about the best ways to improve teacher effectiveness, or how schools that serve the students most in need can attract and retain effective teachers. Traditional salary schedules, which pay teachers based on their years of teaching experience and degree attainment, do not reward effective teaching or provide incentives for the most effective teachers to teach in high-need schools. In 2006, Congress established the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in high-need schools. The TIF grants have two goals: (1) reform compensation systems to reward educators for improving student achievement and (2) increase the number of high-performing teachers in high-need schools and hard-to-staff subject areas. The incentives and support offered through TIF grants aim to improve student achievement by improving educator effectiveness and the quality of the teacher workforce.

This presentation is based on the third of four planned reports from a multiyear study for the U.S. Department of Education focusing on the TIF grants awarded in 2010. The study provides detailed findings from a subset of 2010 TIF grantees, the evaluation districts, that participated in a random assignment study of the pay-for-performance component of TIF.

The report focuses on the following 4 research questions:

1. What are the characteristics of all TIF districts and their performance-based compensation systems? What implementation experiences and challenges did TIF districts encounter?
2. How do teachers and principals in schools that did or did not offer pay-for-performance bonuses compare on key dimensions, including their understanding of TIF program features, exposure to TIF activities, allocation of time, and attitudes toward teaching and the TIF program?
3. How do pay-for-performance bonuses affect educator effectiveness and the retention and recruitment of high-performing educators?
4. What is the impact of pay-for-performance bonuses on students' achievement on state assessments in math and reading?

This presentation will focus on evaluation grantees’ implementation experiences and educators’ understanding of, and attitudes toward, the program near the end of the third year of program implementation, as well as changes in educators’ understanding and attitudes. We will also present findings of the impacts of pay-for-performance bonuses on student achievement after one, two, and three years of TIF implementation.