Technical Assistance Team. Introduction and Overview

Transcription

1 Technical Assistance Team Introduction and Overview September 2013

2 The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) Technical Assistance (TA) Team is federally funded to provide technical support to the 36 TIF 4 grantees under Contract Number ED-ESE Six partner organizations make up our team: Westat University of Wisconsin-Madison American Institutes for Research (AIR) Synergy Enterprises, Inc. J. Koppich & Associates Horizon Research

3 TIF 4 Grantees Alliance College-Ready Public Schools Aspire Public Schools Breakthrough Charter Schools Calcasieu Parish School System Center for Education Innovation - Public Education Association - New Jersey Center for Education Innovation - Public Education Association - New York Charleston County School District Community Training and Assistance Center, INC. District of Columbia Public Schools Education Achievement Authority of Michigan Education Service Center 18 Fort Wayne Community Schools Gilchrist County School District Green Dot Public Schools Harrison School District Hillsborough County Public Schools Houston Independent School District Life School of Dallas Los Angeles Unified School District Maine Department of Education Maricopa County Education Service Agency National Institute for Excellence in Teaching- IA National Institute for Excellence in Teaching - MN National Institute for Excellence in Teaching - TN New Haven Public Schools New York City Department of Education Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey School Board of Miami Dade County School Board of Orange County School District 1 in the City and County of Denver School District of Lee County South Carolina Department of Education Tennessee Department of Education The School Board of Broward County Washoe County School District

4 The experts on our TA Team have vast experience working with grantees on a variety of issues. Services provided by the TIF TA Team are organized around ten programmatic focus areas. Salary Schedule Work with grantees to align their salary structures with organizational goals and priorities. Help grantees with the design of alternative salary structures, including performance-based salary schedules, career lattices, and targeted bonuses. Assist grantees with estimating the costs of alternative salary structures. Career Ladder Provide assistance to develop a pathway that offers educators a structured career, developmental stages based on evaluation, and performance pay. Help grantees develop career ladders that enable excellent teachers to assume leadership roles based on performance. Work with grantees to develop cost models to estimate short- and long-term costs of career pathways and ladders. Data Quality and Data Systems Assist grantees with technical analysis of data system characteristics that support requirements for measurement models. Review data quality plans and approaches for identifying and verifying student-teacher linkages within growth models. Provide key approaches for assessing data quality, data governance organization, and data systems integration. Teacher and/or Principal Evaluation Help TIF grantees design, implement, and evaluate comprehensive teacher evaluation systems that integrate measures of student academic growth, professional practice, and expanded responsibilities and leadership roles. Work with TIF grantees to design, implement, and evaluate new principal evaluation systems that integrate measures of leadership, schoolwide growth in core subject areas, school climate, and student and teacher feedback. Assist TIF grantees with creating and validating new measures of student academic growth, including student learning objectives (SLOs), for subjects and grade levels that are not included in state assessments or other testing programs.

5 These areas encompass U.S. Department of Education (ED) priorities for the TIF program as well as key components of high-quality implementation. Below are examples of TA we provide. Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Help grantees work with teacher and administrator unions and associations to develop support for the TIF plan. Work with grantees to design an effective plan to communicate with educators, parents, and the community. Assist grantees with designing a media strategy and establishing relationships with local media contacts. Student Growth, SLOs, and/or Other Measurement Issues Review characteristics of assessments grantees are using to measure student growth. Provide training sessions on key features of growth modeling and demonstrate how the design of models should be firmly grounded in and driven by grantee policy requirements. Assist grantees with technical analysis of proposed measurement models and underlying test metrics to look for issues such as unintended incentives or bias. Human Capital Management Strategies That Support and Improve the Educator Workforce Design processes to ensure professional development opportunities link to educator needs. Analyze the alignment of human resource programs with grantee strategies for improving student achievement and desired educator performance competencies. Create and review processes that use data to inform recruitment, hiring, induction, mentoring, and tenure decisions. Program Evaluation Help external evaluators construct a matched comparison sample for a rigorous evaluation framework. Work with grantees to use the program s goals to develop a logic model and research questions. Assist grantees with developing methods for measuring programmatic effectiveness.

6 Fiscal and/or Programmatic Sustainability Work with grantees to align their performance-based compensation systems (PBCS) with key district initiatives in order to ensure programmatic and systemic sustainability. Assist grantees with increasing awareness and generating discussions about their PBCS, focusing on long-term fiscal sustainability of the grantee s new compensation models. Advise grantees about building alternative salary structures that fit program goals and objectives. Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) Assist grantees with creating a vision for their STEM education improvement efforts. Help grantees understand factors to consider in identifying, supporting, and evaluating STEM master teachers. Provide assistance in disseminating information about teaching and wlearning in STEM fields. For more information, TIF4@westat.com