In 2006 and 2007, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) awarded $478 million in grants from the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) to support the development of innovative teacher compensation strategies. New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS), together with five partners--Memphis City Schools (MCS), the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), Denver Public Schools, Prince Georges County Public Schools, and a consortium of charter schools--have received more than $88 million of these funds to implement the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) program. EPIC offers performance-based awards to staff in high-performing schools in return for their agreement to cooperate with New Leaders' efforts to document and share effective teaching practices. Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., (MPR) has been hired to evaluate the EPIC initiative in Memphis, DC, and the charter consortium. In this report, the authors present their evaluation design. They detail their estimation procedures, document what is currently known about how EPIC operates within the various partners, and provide a workplan for the evaluation moving forward. In the first chapter, they provide an overview of EPIC and present their general approach to conducting the evaluation. Chapter II presents their approach to evaluating EPIC in Memphis. Chapter III includes their approach to evaluating EPIC in Washington, DC. Chapter IV presents their approach to evaluating EPIC for the charter school consortium. Appended are: (1) List of Measures in New Leaders for New Schools EPIC Evaluation; and (2) Effective Practices Evaluation: Principal/Assistant Principal Survey. (Contains 11 tables, 1 figure and 21 footnotes.)