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Evaluating the Teacher Advancement Program in Chicago Schools
Publications
The foundation of a good school is a faculty of talented teachers. But how do schools attract and retain well-qualified teachers? Policymakers have increasingly turned to compensation reform and career ladders as the solution.
One such program that is growing in popularity is the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), developed by the Milken Family Foundation in the late 1990s. Now led by the National Institute on Excellence in Teaching, TAP's goal is to draw more talented people to the teaching profession—and keep them there—by making it more attractive and rewarding to be a teacher. TAP is a whole school intervention that provides teachers with opportunities for professional growth, promotion to school leadership roles without leaving the classroom, structured feedback, and performance-based compensation. Teacher bonuses are based on value added to student achievement, as well as observed classroom performance and whole school performance.
Mathematica is conducting a five-year impact evaluation of TAP as implemented in the Chicago Public Schools. The Chicago initiative, dubbed Project REAL (Recognizing Excellence in Academic Leadership), is funded by a $27 million Teacher Incentive Fund grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Mathematica's study is the first evaluation of TAP to use random assignment to study the program's effects on student achievement.
Funded by the Joyce Foundation, the study is randomly assigning schools that have volunteered to adopt TAP to either a treatment group that implements the program right away or a control group that delays implementation. The study includes a teacher survey, principal interviews, site visits, and analysis of teacher test score and personnel data provided by the district. The project will issue annual reports with study findings beginning in fall 2008.
Publications
"Evaluation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in the Chicago Public Schools: Study Design Report" (November 2007)
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