09/27/12U.S. ED Unveils $290 Million in Performance-Pay Grants
Education Week (09/27/12) Sawchuk, StephenThe U.S. Department of Education recently announced its fourth round of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants, a program that backs differentiated compensation systems. The program has expanded to include career ladders, where teachers not only get pay bumps but are given additional professional responsibilities; grantees now must secure more support from teachers' unions and others up front, rather than during a planning year; and more attention is paid to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The changes broaden the scope of the grants to foster strategies that improve teaching, evaluation systems, and educator compensation. Among the latest grant recipients are the New Haven Public Schools to create new career ladders for top-performing teachers and the Los Angeles school district to aid teacher evaluation improvements.
