A program intended to retain and reward top teachers in Alief will be seeing its first results this spring.
“TIA was created to reward highly effective teachers through additional compensation based on teacher performance and student growth,” district TIA Project Manager Janay Boykin said. “TIA is also a way to retain highly effective teachers” by offering them additional pay.
Alief joined the program three years ago; teachers and administrators have been training and collecting data on student growth and learning new methods to measure campus and classroom achievement in that time.
The Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), a Texas Education Agency program that provides financial rewards to teachers who excel in the classroom, is fully implemented in the district for the 2023-24 school year. Alief joins approximately 350 districts statewide that are participating in the program.
Under the program, teachers are evaluated on several criteria, including classroom observations by administrators, student growth measures, STAAR scores for the campus and district, and student perception surveys. Teachers could earn additional compensation based on the following designation allotments:
- Recognized: $3,000 – $9,000
- Exemplary: $6,000 – $18,000
- Master: $12,000 – $32,000
Statewide, close to 14,000 teachers have earned a TIA designation.
Boykin said the district’s goal is to use the data collected through the growth measures not just to determine compensation but to help improve instruction in every classroom.
“Through feedback, the goal is to coach teachers to a designation,” she said. It also helps to attract highly effective teachers to Alief and to retain teachers in the classroom. “By having a designation system (TIA) we are able to recruit top talent to our district, which will ultimately have a positive impact on student growth.”
Superintendent Dr. Anthony Mays said in a statement, “In Alief, student growth is key. I believe in TIA and have seen its impact.”
“During these tough times in education TIA helps us address compensation and student achievement challenges.”
TIA is not without its challenges. Boykin said the program required finding new ways to use existing systems for data analysis and collection, as well focusing on calibration to ensure teachers were receiving accurate evaluations and feedback through the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS). Creating goals for classrooms and tracking each students’ progress towards that goal is time-consuming for teachers and administrators. Alief spent the last few years setting up processes and procedures and collecting preliminary data in order to be best positioned for our data submission year.
“TIA helps us advance two big rocks: Teacher Observation and Feedback, and Student Growth – big instructional rocks that will lead to higher student outcomes across all levels”, Dr. Amine, Chief of School Improvement and Accountability said.
To qualify for TIA, teachers must be in the classroom working with students at least 60 percent of their time; they must be contracted by the district as full-time employees; and they must be evaluated under T-TESS. Once they are designated as Recognized, Exemplary or Master, they retain that designation for five years.
Data collected in the 2022-23 school year, the “data capture” year, will be submitted to TEA this fall, Boykin said.
“If our data submission is approved by the state, teachers will receive funding in May of ‘24.”
More information about TIA in Alief can be found on the district’s website at https://www.aliefisd.net/Page/14438.