Teacher Incentive Allotment

What Is It?

The Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) was designed to attract and retain highly effective educators at traditionally hard-to-staff schools by providing a realistic pathway for top teachers to earn six-figure salaries. In order to access to the Teacher Incentive Allotment from the state, the school system must achieve the following:

Goal #1: Develop a rigorous plan to implement a high quality local designation system with input from teachers and other stakeholders—ensuring validity and reliability of measures
Goal #2: Submit an application for approval to TEA
Goal #3: Implement the system’s Teacher Incentive Allotment plan with fidelity

To learn more about this exciting new policy, visit: https://tiatexas.org/

Our Impact

To augment statewide efforts to date, the Texas Impact Network and its content expert partner, Best In Class, are directly supporting 66 school systems through the design and launch of rigorous, multi-measure teacher evaluation and professional development systems approved by TEA. The expertise provided by the Network and BIC informs strategic compensation, professional development, and staffing strategies that will increase the likelihood of successful TIA implementation.

Twenty-one school systems supported by the Network have been approved at some stage of the application process. Twenty-two systems supported by the Network have applied so far – a 95% success rate.
Thirty-six additional school systems supported by the Network applied for Cohort D in April 2021.
At least seven additional school systems supported by the Network will apply for Cohort E in April 2022.

Broad and Diverse Support

The Texas Impact Network/Best in Class team currently works with school systems in 16 out of the 20 Education Service Center (ESC) regions offering support and creating a roadmap for successful TIA implementation uniquely suited to each region of Texas. The largest school system in the Network serves 209,000 students and the smallest serves 123 students. The Network provides special assistance to rural districts in this area through the Rural TIA Consortium. Over time, the Network plans to scale support to all 20 ESCs, representing high-quality support for the entire state.

Rural TIA Consortium

Historically, teachers in rural school systems have made significantly less than their counterparts in urban and suburban systems, and the limited resources in small systems are not conducive for improving the situation. TIA provides an unprecedented opportunity for exceptional teachers working in rural school systems to earn salaries comparable to their counterparts in urban and suburban school systems and slows the flight of rural teachers to larger neighboring school systems. The Texas Impact Network developed the Rural TIA consortium to ensure 20 pioneering rural school systems receive hands-on instruction and support to guide the successful implementation of TIA requirements and provide a blueprint and proof point for their peer school systems around the state.

Growing Implementation Capacity

In 2021-2022, the Network is partnering with staff in nine Education Service Centers to build TIA design and implementation capacity at scale to ensure high-quality support is accessible to any school system in a region. Identified staff at participating ESCs ‘ride along’ as team members support TIA implementation in a school system in their region, leveraging and learning from the team’s expertise in:

boutique consulting for one-to-one school system support, including national and state expertise on evaluation/compensation systems project management, and stakeholder engagement,
effectively utilizing internally developed tools and resources (ie; TIA, Results Delivery, and Strategic Evaluation Toolkits), and
frequently convening school systems and partners in a community of practice representing more than 1 in 5 students in Texas, creating an unmatched “multiplier effect” of the work.

Resources

Best in Class Teacher Incentive Allotment Toollkit

Video: "Teacher Incentive Allotment in Rural Texas"

Videos

“With the Teacher Incentive Allotment, we check every box there is: Rural, low income students. [But] in our rural communities, it’s me, a business manager, and we share a secretary. We depend on experts like the Impact Network to help us with information and build these programs ”

Crosbyton ISD Supt. Shawn Mason