Purpose: Although culturally relevant education (CRE) practices support student achievement, particularly for students of color, these practices are rarely adopted or effectively implemented in US schools. This study examines what policies facilitate or impede Latinx teachers' use of CRE practices. Research Methods/Approach: Utilizing Latina/o…

Nationally, teachers have experienced major changes in how their performance is evaluated. Teacher satisfaction with the evaluation system likely influences whether they will use the evaluation data to make instructional improvements, yet we know little about teachers' perceptions of their evaluations. Using survey data from Chicago Public…

Personnel evaluation systems have historically failed to identify and remediate low-performing teachers. In 2012, Chicago Public Schools implemented an evaluation system that incorporated remediation and dismissal plans for low-rated teachers. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that the evaluation reform increased the exit of low-rated…

This applied research methods report is a guide for state and local education agency policymakers and their analysts who are interested in studying teacher mobility and retention. This report is the second in a two-part set and builds on the foundational information in report 1. This report presents guidance on how to interpret differences in…

The educational system is in a continual state of refinement in an effort to improve effectiveness. Many decisions are made regarding policy and procedure at the individual school level ascending to the federal level. The majority workforce carrying out these reform efforts is comprised of classroom teachers. Teachers have the most direct…

K-12 teachers who write about their daily work on blogs and other social media platforms share local knowledge and wisdom from the immediate view of the classroom. These first-hand retellings of everyday classroom life offer a unique critique of educational policy from the teachers' perspective. Reporting on the analysis of 14 public-facing blogs…

Communities across the country are grappling with different approaches to improving their schools. Introducing or expanding charter schools is one of the approaches that states and school districts have considered or implemented. Charter schools serve more than 5 percent of public school students nationwide and make up close to 7 percent of all…

Hillsborough County Public Schools has launched a teacher evaluation system that has attracted attention from educators and policy makers across the country. Centralized, collaborative, communications-driven and adaptable are key characteristics of Hillsborough's approach. The system consists of two main components: observation of instruction and…

District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) is a state-funded program in Texas that provides grants to districts for the implementation of locally-designed performance pay plans. All districts in the state are eligible to receive grants, but participation is voluntary. As D.A.T.E. continues in its second year of operation with approximately…

A recent report published by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) presents findings from the second-year of a multi-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, a statewide educator incentive program that operated in Texas. As part of this larger study, evaluators examined how participation in the TEEG…

A recent report published by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) presents findings from the first-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, one of several statewide educator incentive programs in Texas. Findings are based on the responses of full-time instructional personnel at over 1,000 TEEG schools…

Pay for performance is a popular public education reform, and millions of dollars are currently being targeted for pay for performance programs. These reforms are popular because economic and management theories suggest that well-designed incentive pay programs could improve teacher effectiveness. There is little evidence about the characteristics…

In U.S. K-12 public education, incentive pay for educators remains firmly fixed as a high-interest policy topic and has recently become a popular reform initiative in many school systems. The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), created in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education, is at the forefront of this policy movement and has provided hundreds of…

This report presents findings stemming from the first-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, one of several statewide performance incentive programs in Texas. In June 2006, Governor Perry and the 79th Texas Legislature created the Governor's Educator Excellence Award Program, one component of which is the TEEG…

The Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program was federally- and state-funded and provided three-year grants to schools to design and implement performance pay plans from the 2005-06 to 2007-08 school years. GEEG was implemented in 99 high poverty, high performing Texas public schools. This report builds on the previous GEEG evaluation…