Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that Seattle Public Schools is among the winning applicants of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant competition. The five-year TIF program seeks to strengthen the education profession by rewarding excellence, attracting teachers and principals to high-need and hard to staff areas, and providing all teachers and principals with the feedback and support they need to succeed.
Seattle Public Schools will receive $12,498,772 over five years. The grant will contribute, in part, to funding some of the elements of the recently negotiated three-year agreement with the Seattle Education Association.
“The receipt of the TIF grant is a powerful endorsement of the work that our teachers, principals and staff are doing to accelerate student achievement and eliminate the achievement gap. This is a real boost to our system-wide focus on performance management and accountability that is part of our commitment to improving instruction in every classroom,” said Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D., Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools.
“The recent landmark agreement between Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association demonstrates the commitment that staff across the district share to ensure all students succeed,” said Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. “I want to thank our teachers and leaders for their work to reach this historic agreement, which was a key factor that evaluators considered when they awarded this grant to our district.”
Glenn Bafia, Seattle Education Association’s (SEA) Executive Director, said that “SEA is excited that portions of our negotiated collective bargaining agreement will be funded thanks to this TIF grant. We all worked very hard to get this agreement, knowing that we would have to work together to secure the needed funding. We’re part of the way there with this grant, and the November 2 levy is now critically needed support for teachers to meet the needs of their students in all of our schools.”
The $12,498,772 TIF grant is part of a larger $21M project that will position Seattle Public Schools (SPS) as a strong regional model of how compensation systems can support teacher and principal professional growth and, in the process, improve student learning outcomes. Over five years, this project will directly impact more than 800 teachers and 54 principals and assistant principals; and most importantly, more than 16,000 students who will be led by motivated, highly effective teachers and principals across 34 target high-need schools. After the project period, SPS will sustain the momentum enabled by this TIF grant to reach all schools in our K-12 system, the largest in the state, and set an example for school systems throughout the rest of the state.
Over the last three years, Seattle has taken significant steps toward becoming a coherent system where all schools and central staff work together to achieve clear goals for student achievement. System-wide performance goals, aligned supports to help schools and staff meet expectations, and differentiated interventions based on student learning outcomes are among the major improvements at the District. This work to design and implement a school improvement system for the district lays the foundation needed to be successful with the next phase of work: developing and implementing a system to better support all of our teachers and principals in every school.
Having already launched improvements to hiring, evaluation, and mentoring, our TIF proposal sought support to move forward on five comprehensive and strategic fronts:
- Recruit: Incentives for recruiting principals and teachers to high-need, low-performing schools;
- Mentor: Mentoring programs for teachers and principals;
- Support: Teacher and principal professional development aligned to new evaluation;
- Evaluate and Assess: System includes observations and student growth measures for evaluating teachers and student achievement goals for principals; and
- Recognize/Reward and Retain: Career ladder opportunities for teachers; incentives for teachers in high-need, low-performing schools; and principal incentive pay for high performers.
The ultimate outcome of the proposed work will be a dramatic improvement in student achievement. Specifically, SPS expects that over the next five years the district will see a 15 percentage point decline in the number of schools performing in the lowest two segments of our quantitative performance framework. This shift from 40% of schools in these segments (68% of which enroll more than 50% FRL-eligible students) to no more than 25%, will result from continued focus on strengthening curriculum, content-focused instructional support, and high quality service programs, AND talent that is supported, mentored, and recognized for high performance with career growth opportunities.
Background on Department of Education TIF Grants
This year's winning applicants were selected by a group of 60 independent, expert peer reviewers. They were judged on their comprehensive plans to develop, reward, and support effective teachers and principals in high-need schools, based on evaluations that include multiple measures, including student growth.
Applicants were also required to demonstrate a high level of local educator support and involvement and a plan for financial sustainability after the 5 year grant award period. Applicants received additional points for using value added measures, attracting effective teachers in hard to staff subject or specialty areas, and for being a first-time applicant.