Across the United States, educators and education leaders are increasingly recognizing the value of social and emotional learning (SEL), school climate, and related whole-person efforts as keys to enabling student success. Many school districts are still exploring or just beginning implementation of these whole-person efforts, and many have…

Spurred by the federal Race to the Top competition, the state of Tennessee implemented a comprehensive statewide educator evaluation system in 2011. The new system is designed to increase the rigor of evaluations and better differentiate teachers based on performance. The use of more differentiated ratings represents a significant shift in…

Amid growing signs of America's weakening position in the global economy, federal and state policymakers and major foundations have set ambitious goals for increasing postsecondary attainment in the United States. Given changing U.S. demographics, it has become clear that these national goals are attainable only with vastly improved outcomes among…

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…

Responses from 35 of 52 state tech prep coordinators indicated that 77% had evaluation plans; 68.6% had mechanisms for identifying tech prep students. Most frequent evaluation components were articulation, staff development, curriculum, and marketing. Most used evaluation criteria were job placement, postsecondary enrollment, graduation rate, and…

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…

Reports the implementation of a quality assurance program in Colorado mental health facilities, designed to help managers know how they were doing on operational issues. The program was simple, low cost, and easy to implement. All levels of management found it a useful tool. (Author/WAS)

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…

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…

Within the educational reform debate, there is general agreement that the development of high academic standards is an important first step toward improving academic outcomes. This report highlights the standards initiatives being implemented in Colorado, Delaware, Minnesota, and South Carolina. All four states have made substantial progress in…

Since the announcement in 1999 of a plan to tie teachers' salary increases to student achievement by Denver Public Schools, there has been a flood of nationwide policy activity around teacher compensation. This paper examines pay plans in Denver, Toledo, Minneapolis, and New York City, offering a snapshot of the changing landscape of teacher…

This report presents a plan for an Educational Assessment and Accountability System for Hawaii. The purpose of this plan is to provide an analytical as well as a descriptive account of the condition of public education in Hawaii. It is meant to be a vehicle to provide the means by which educational outcomes can be examined in light of contextual…

Measures of quality are now in widespread use across states as part of quality improvement initiatives. For example, many states are currently using global measures of quality that were first developed for research and practice purposes (such as the Environmental Rating Scales) in their Quality Rating Systems (QRSs). Although global quality…

An assessment was made of the initial efforts of the states to implement the Aid to Families with Dependent Children--Unemployed Parent (AFDC-UP) program in accordance with the requirements of the Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988. A mail survey was conducted of each of the 50 state welfare departments. Results indicated that, nationwide,…