Teacher Incentive Fund Grantee Profiles

Houston Independent School District Project SMART

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) Project SMART (Strategies for Motivating and Rewarding Teachers) focuses on teacher effectiveness and growth in student learning at the campus (school) and individual teacher and principal levels. The project will serve 109 schools (out of 306) with at least 30 percent or more educationally disadvantaged students and 4,187 teachers.

Location(s)Houston, Texas

Award Date November 2006

Grant Amount
Five-year total: $11,781,323

Duration 5 years

Partners N/A

Needs Assessment Results and General Information
HISD students are classified as 91.5 percent minority and 81.7 percent economically disadvantaged. The students in HISD are more likely than those in other districts to be limited English proficient or speakers of English as a second language and at-risk (35.5% and 67.1%, respectively). Compared to Texas as a whole, HISD students underperformed on the statewide Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), demonstrated lower academic achievement on high school completion exams, and had lower graduation rates (75.8%). HISD’s mean SAT score (934) falls below the Texas mean score (987).

HISD has a higher percentage of new teachers with zero to 5 years experience (39.6%) and those with 11 or more years experience (44.4%) but a lower percentage of teachers with 6-10 years experience (16.1%) than is seen statewide. Close to 37,000 Texas teachers leave the profession or retire each year, and the number of non-certified teachers increased to 13 percent in 2003. There was also a higher percentage of turnover (15.2%) compared to another large urban area, Dallas (14.1%).

Background
The HISD Project SMART performance-incentive plan for teachers focuses on teacher effectiveness and growth in student learning at both campus and individual teacher levels. Based on teacher, principal, and other stakeholder input, the revised performance-pay program plan for teachers and principals has been revised into the ASPIRE Award. This, in turn, will also allow HISD to increase and retain the number of effective teachers teaching poor, minority, and disadvantaged students in hard-to-staff subjects such as mathematics and science, increase principal effectiveness, and increase student achievement.

Incentives
The incentive structure comprises of three strands, which were updated in 2007.

Strand I: Campus value-added analysis of composite scores created using multiple years of data from the Stanford and TAKS across subjects and across grades. All instructional staff are eligible for $250-$500.
Strand II: Rewards core instructional staff for individual efforts at improving student academic performance at the Center for Educator Compensation Reform classroom/student cohort level through the application of teacher-level or campus-level value-added analysis of student academic progress. In order to include more teachers, there are four parts of this strand to ensure the inclusion of the maximum number of core teachers in PK-12:
- Part A is used to give incentives to self-contained core subject teachers in elementary school grades 3-6 based on teacher value-added scores by subject, with awards ranging from $150-$1,500.
- Part B is used to give incentives to departmentalized elementary school and middle school core teachers in grades 3-8 based on teacher value-added scores by subject, with awards ranging from $375-$1,500.
- Part C gives incentives to core instructional teachers at the high school level based on campus department value-added scores by subject, with awards ranging from $375-$1,500.
- Part D gives incentives to EC-2nd grade teachers based on campus value-added scores for reading and math, with awards ranging from $187.50-$750.
Strand III: Rewards instructional staff for cooperative efforts at improving student performance at the campus level and for achieving or maintaining the Recognized or Exemplary performance of their students. There are two parts to this strand:
- Part A: Campus improvement, designed to reward instructional staff at schools whose students have exhibited significant improvement when compared to other similar schools across the state, and based on TEA Comparable Improvement. Awards range from $250-$1,000.
- Part B: Campus achievement, designed to reward instructional staff at schools whose students reach and maintain high levels of academic achievements, and based solely on TEA Accountability Ratings. The
  Houston Independent School Districts funds all rewards for Strand IIIB.
  
  Principals will be eligible based on school performance in Strand I and Strand III, and on student value-added performance for Strand II. A principal’s incentive amount is not to exceed $3,000 of TIF funds.

Evaluation
Formative and summative evaluations will be conducted. Tune-series and two-group matched-comparison designs using quantitative and qualitative data will be used to determine the overall effectiveness of Project SMART via quarterly and annual evaluations. They will include data from student achievement and academic perfor-mance indicators, program implementation indicators, program context indicators, and assistant principal and principal leadership abilities.

Resources
Teacher Incentive Fund money will be used to implement Project SMART and will provide up to $3,000 in incentives to teachers and administrators at participating schools. HISD will match $7,788,909 (65% of TIF) to enable 100 percent HISD funding by year 6 and will further increase the total amount of award pay for teachers ($7,300) and principals ($9,000).

Data Systems

Battelle for Kids has provided a database that allows teachers to verify and manage their student linkages to the students they provide with instruction, and district administration has provided Battelle for Kids with the data to load the system.
The SAS® EVAAS® system of value-added data provides a more useful measure of teacher perfor-mance and student achievement by providing one value-added score per core subject for students, teachers, and campuses. The incorporation of the SAS® EVAAS® value-added data allows student achievement data to be used to measure effective-ness to simultaneously control for multiple socio-economic factors and differing levels of the historical learning of each student prior to entry into a teachers classroom. The incorporation of up to 3 years of student data makes the annual effectiveness scores of teachers less subject to fluctuation error and bias.

Year 1 Activities
The Houston Independent School District implemented the Teacher Performance-Pay Model in year 1, paying out incentive amounts in January of 2007 (based on 2005-2006 data). 3,806 out of 4,187 teachers in the 109 Project SMART schools received performance-pay. The total payout in January of 2007 was $15,652,785 for the entire district. Of that amount, $3,585,965 was paid by the Teacher Incentive Fund, and $12,066,820 was paid by the local district.

Outlook for Year 2
The model has been redesigned based on lessons learned in year 1. The current model, ASPIRE, uses value-added scores calculated by SAS® EVAAS® and includes an increased amount for awards, funded locally by the district. SAS® EVAAS® completes the data analysis for value-added score information and for payout. HISD has also partnered with Battelle for Kids; BFK is conducting trainings across the district to better communicate the model’s objectives and payout strategy. HISD is scheduled to pay incentive awards in January 2008, using data from the 2006-2007 school year.

This page last updated on: January 17, 2008.