Attracting and retaining quality teachers, improving student outcomes

Six years ago, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 3 (86R) into law, creating the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). This innovative statewide program provides school systems with high-quality teacher evaluation systems funding to retain their best teachers, recruit promising new teachers, and incentivize top-performing educators to work in high-needs schools and difficult-to-staff positions. With Governor Abbott issuing teacher pay raises as an emergency item this legislative session, lawmakers now have an opportunity to build on the success of the TIA program and continue to scale its impact so that more Texas teachers earn six-figure salaries.  

‍

Senate Bill 26, introduced last month by Senate Education Committee Chair Brandon Creighton and co-authored by 18 other State Senators, holds great promise to meet the Governor’s call and further bolster quality teaching throughout Texas. Alongside several TIA-designated educators, Ben Mackey, Executive Director of the Texas Impact Network, testified to this end in support of SB 26 before the Texas Senate Committee on Education, emphasizing how by empowering districts across the state to identify their most effective teachers and compensate them more, the TIA program has “created an opportunity for school systems to really stabilize their effective teacher workforce and earn student outcomes.” 

‍

‍

As of this past school year, over 26,000 Texas teachers are designated TIA teachers, earning more than $290 million for their school systems, at least 90% of which goes directly into educator salaries. But it’s not just about the money, it’s about the impact that TIA is having on teachers and students, as Senator Creighton stated in the Senate Education Committee hearing, “TIA is changing lives.”

‍

TIA-designated teachers are also being retained in their districts at significantly higher rates (8% pts higher than non TIA-designated teachers), and simultaneously student outcomes are benefiting. Recent research from Texas Tech University found that early TIA-implementing school systems  have outperformed non-TIA systems in both math and reading, which is especially critical in the wake of pandemic-induced learning loss. 

‍

The benefits of TIA have led to explosive growth of the program across the state in just a few short years. Expanding from an initial batch of just a handful of districts to covering school systems educating 69% of Texas public school students, 597 districts across the state are now in the process of implementing a TIA system. More than 300 of those systems are small or rural schools, and most of the campuses have higher rates of poverty than the state average. The average TIA-designated teacher teaches on a campus where 75% of students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

‍

As Ben Mackey told the Senate Education Committee, “We’re really seeing this give schools systems the tools that they need to get their best teachers in front of the students who need them.”

‍

Senate Bill 26 stands to make a massive investment to continue the growth of the TIA program and the student success that it brings, including adding an additional designation tier so that more effective teachers are eligible for designation, expanding funding amounts per designation, and creating a grant program that will help more districts implement TIA programs as well as expanding existing programs to identify more effective teachers, including those teaching a wider range of subject areas. The proposed legislation also provides additional incentive funding to school systems implementing other effective compensation efforts such as principal and assistant principal strategic compensation in order to support campus leadership excellence and further influence teacher effectiveness, student achievement, and positive school culture. 

‍

“This is a strong bill,” testified Mackey. “It does what we need to do for our teachers — not only for the teacher, but most importantly, for the students that they serve because it is showing the impact on student outcomes as well as teacher retention and teacher morale.”

‍