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Evaluating the Effective Practice Incentive Community Initiative

Teacher and principal incentives are playing a major role in current education policy debates. However, many educators and policymakers are concerned that without better information on how to improve student achievement, increased incentives may not be sufficient.

New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS) is implementing an innovative initiative called the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC). The program offers incentives to educators in schools with significant student achievement gains to help document and disseminate their practices—to address the need for information on what is working in some urban public schools across the country. New Leaders staff work with principals and teachers in these schools to identify practices that may contribute to growth in student achievement. Practices are then disseminated widely via the online EPIC Knowledge System. The primary motivation for EPIC is the belief that access to and use of EPIC professional development modules will result in changes in principal and teacher practices and lead to improvements in student achievement.

EPIC is funded by the Teacher Incentive Fund program of the U.S. Department of Education. In 2006, New Leaders, together with four partners—Memphis City Schools, the District of Columbia Public Schools, Denver Public Schools, and a consortium of over 100 charter schools nationwide—received four grants to implement EPIC. Mathematica is evaluating the EPIC initiative in Memphis, DC, and the charter consortium. We are also identifying effective schools and teachers in these schools.

Publications

"Measuring School Effectiveness in Memphis: Year 2" (October 2009)
"Measuring School and Teacher Effectiveness in the EPIC Charter School Consortium: Year 2" (October 2009)
"2008 Principal/Vice Principal Survey Results for Evaluation of the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC)" (March 2009)
"Design of the Evaluation of the Effective Practice Incentive Community Initiative" (March 2009)
"Baseline Statistics for Evaluation of the Effective Practice Incentive Community" (March 2009)
"Measuring School Effectiveness in Memphis" (April 2008)
"Measuring Charter School Effectiveness Across States" (April 2008)
"Measuring Teacher Effectiveness in Memphis" (April 2008)