Evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund: Implementation and Impacts of Pay-for-Performance after Three Years. Executive Summary. NCEE 2016-4005
Author: Wellington, Alison
Date: 2016-08-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Academic Achievement,Teacher Influence,Merit Pay,Rewards,Grants,Teacher Salaries,School Districts,Program Implementation,Program Evaluation,Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Behavior,Program Effectiveness,Faculty Development,Principals,Evaluation Methods,Eligibility,Administrator Attitudes,Incentives,Achievement Gains,Student Characteristics,Teacher Characteristics,Surveys,Observation,Mathematics Tests,Reading Tests,Scores,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement,Correlation,Elementary Schools,Middle Schools,Randomized Controlled Trials

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. This study focuses on performance-based compensation systems that were established under TIF grants awarded in 2010. It examines grantees' programs and implementation experiences and the impacts of pay-for-performance bonuses on educator effectiveness and student achievement. This report, the third from the study, describes the programs and implementation experiences of all 2010 TIF grantees in the 2013-2014 school year, the third of four years of implementation for nearly all grantees. The main findings for all districts that received 2010 TIF grants include the following: (1) Overall implementation of TIF requirements among all 2010 TIF districts was very similar in the third year of implementation as in previous years; and (2) Few TIF districts in the third year reported that key activities related to implementation of their program were a major challenge, and districts were less likely to report major challenges in the third year than in the second year. This report also 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. For the ten evaluation districts that completed three years of TIF implementation, the report provides an in-depth analysis of TIF implementation and the impacts of pay-for-performance bonuses on educator and student outcomes after the first (2011-2012), second (2012-2013), and third (2013- 2014) years. The main findings for the ten evaluation districts include the following: (1) Pay-for-performance had small, positive impacts on students' reading and math achievement; (2) Few evaluation districts structured pay-for-performance bonuses to align well with TIF grant guidance; and (3) Teachers' understanding of performance measures continued to improve between the second and third year of implementation, but many teachers still did not understand that they were eligible for a bonus or underestimated how much they could earn. [For the full report, &quot;Evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund: Implementation and Impacts of Pay-for-Performance after Three Years. NCEE 2016-4004,&quot; see ED568150. For the NCEE Study Snapshot, &quot;Implementation and Impacts of Pay-for-Performance: The 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) Grantees after Three Years. NCEE Study Snapshot. NCEE 2016-2006,&quot; see ED568149.]