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Teacher Advancement Program Improves Teacher Retention in Chicago
But No Measurable Impact on Test Scores Found in the First Six Months
Contact: Cheryl Pedersen, (609) 275-2258
PRINCETON, N.J. (May 4, 2009)—The Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) is a whole-school intervention that aims to improve schools by raising teacher quality. It provides teachers with opportunities for professional growth, promotion to school leadership roles without leaving the classroom, structured feedback, and performance-based compensation. More than 200 schools around the country have implemented TAP, and its most recent expansion came via the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF). A new report from Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., focuses on one TIF grantee, the Chicago Public Schools, which began implementing TAP in 2007 and plans to continue adding 10 new TAP schools each year of the grant’s four-year period.
TAP enables teachers to earn extra pay and responsibilities through promotion to mentor or master teacher; they can also earn annual performance bonuses based on the value they add to student achievement and their performance in the classroom.
Early findings from Mathematica’s study of Chicago TAP, which focused on the district’s K-8 schools, include:
- Teachers in TAP schools reported significantly more mentoring and support than their peers in similar schools.
- Teachers in TAP schools had compensation expectations in line with program policies.
- Although TAP led to changes inside schools, these changes did not produce measurable impacts on student test scores through March of the start-up year. Student achievement growth as measured by average math and reading scores on the Illinois Standards Assessment Test did not differ significantly between TAP and non-TAP schools.
The program had a significant impact on teacher retention. TAP teachers were five percentage points more likely to return to their schools than were non-TAP teachers.
“For a popular program that’s being replicated all over the country, we don’t have much independent, rigorous research on its impacts, so this Chicago experience with TAP is going to get a lot of well deserved scrutiny,” said Steven Glazerman, lead author of the study and a senior researcher at Mathematica. “While policymakers will be encouraged by the positive impact on teacher retention, this first-year analysis shows that it’s not a quick fix for schools looking to boost test scores in six months. We’ll have to see what happens in the coming years.”
The study, funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation, gathered data from student test score files, a teacher survey, a set of principal interviews, and teacher administrative records for the treatment schools and the control schools. The pool of schools to randomize was small, so to complement the experimental analysis the research team created a comparison sample of 18 additional schools by matching them according to size, average teacher experience, and student demographics to the TAP schools.
The report, “An Evaluation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in Chicago: Year One Impact Report,” by Glazerman, Allison McKie, and Nancy Carey, is available at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/redirect_pubsdb.asp?strSite=pdfs/Education/TAP_rpt.pdf.
Future reports will present findings on implementation and impacts of Chicago TAP over time, addressing concerns of both sample size and start-up effects. Data collection will continue for the schools studied in cohorts 1 and 2 to provide evidence on whether TAP becomes more effective over time as schools gain experience adapting to the program. In addition, researchers randomly assigned a second set of Chicago TAP applicants to cohorts 3 and 4 in March 2009, with cohort 3 implementing TAP in the 2009-2010 school year and cohort 4 implementing TAP in 2010-2011. Collecting data on cohorts 3 and 4 will ultimately enable more precise estimates of the impacts of the first two years of TAP implementation by increasing the sample size.
Based in Chicago, the Joyce Foundation supports efforts to protect the natural environment of the Great Lakes, to reduce poverty and violence in the region, and to ensure that its people have access to good schools, decent jobs, and a diverse and thriving culture. To learn more about the foundation and its programs, visit www.joycefdn.org.
Mathematica, a nonpartisan research firm, conducts high-quality, objective policy research and surveys to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Oakland, Calif., and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of education, health care, welfare, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs in the United States.