State Education Leader

Provide nonmonetary incentives (e.g., reduced class size, teacher aides, increased autonomy, career ladders) for teachers who work in high-need schools. 

Build the capacity of principals and coaches in high-need schools to use evaluation frameworks and results to provide actionable feedback and tailor professional learning for individual teachers. Help them leverage educator evaluation results to identify targeted, job-embedded professional development. 

Establish cross-district principal mentor networks to build the capacity of principal-mentors to give actionable feedback and helpful support. 

More effectively compete with other districts for talent by accelerating hiring timelines. One way to do this is to identify vacancies early by providing a monetary incentive for early notification of resignation or retirement, and a monetary penalty for late notice. 

Support innovative incentives for effective teachers to transfer to disadvantaged, low-performing schools. 

Deny transfers of ineffective teachers to other schools or classrooms, especially lower-tracked classrooms or underperforming schools.

Provide principal professional development on school scheduling and teacher assignment. 

This report from the Institute of Education Sciences reviews findings from research on the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), implemented in 10 school districts across the country. The TTI offers teachers a total of $20,000 over the course of two years if they transferred to, and stayed in, low-performing schools. The researchers found that transfer incentives may be a feasible policy to fill vacancies; however, there must be a large pool of experienced teacher candidates from which to choose. In this case, the ratio was 16 candidates per teaching position.

This report reviews findings from research on the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), implemented in 10 school districts across the country. The TTI offers teachers a total of $20,000 over the course of two years if they transferred, and stayed, in low-performing schools. The researchers found that the incentive attracted teachers with high value-added scores in 88 percent of vacancies. In addition, in those classrooms, students’ test scores increased over the two years in math and reading.